Fans of the divine Joel McCrea and the adorable Jean Arthur will enjoy watching them doing the romantic fencing needed to prolong the love story aspect of the movie. The trouble is that the other aspect of the movie, the bank robbery, is really, really dumb, and makes even 72 minutes seem long, with its plot that is ridiculous and totally unbelievable both strategically and psychologically. Every time the movie comes round to it, it seems even less believable and more tiresome.That's not the only reason for the low rating. There is an extended joke involving a dead child that is horrible and offensive, and a quick joke involving a blind beggar that is also pretty tasteless. Yes, people at that time did not react the same way we do, but other movies did not commit such gross lapses of taste that, for me anyway, threw the comedy off the track.

I was expecting a treat here. After all, there was Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, Reginald Owen, and Thomas Mitchell. I was also expecting a comedy. Wrong on both counts. The cast performances here were disappointing, and this is a drama...well...sort of.When she made this film, Jean Arthur had been in the business for 13 years, but she had only recently hit it big with "Mr. Deeds Goes To Town". Far too many of her earlier films were memorable only for their titles (such as "The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu"). But, beginning in this year, and for the next 8 years, Arthur was a force to be reckoned with at the box office. Here you see hints of the Arthur to come.Joel McCrea's finest film period began about 3 years after this film, and lasted for 3-4 years until he began concentrating on Westerns...which may have seemed financially wise at the time, but today do not exactly help one's film legacy. McCrea is "okay" here, but if you want to see him at his best, try something like "Foreign Correspondent" or "Palm Beach Story".So, you have each of these actors at something less than their best, and you'll probably be disappointed in both Reginald Owen and Thomas Mitchell (and one is rarely disappointed in Mitchell). And then there's the story line, which is a bit of a stretch. Can anyone really be as intuitive as McCrea is supposed to be in this film? And that is the question that hold the plot together...barely.And so, while I was expecting a treat here, I got a trick. I hung through until the end, although I'm not quite sure why. Ah well, they can't all be winners.

It takes a deft touch to produce an amusing crime drama -- as Powell and Loy did for Nick and Nora and as "Mr and Mrs North" did on radio in the 40s. This one begins to get interesting as the McCrea character sneaks into a house to check out the cruel joke that has apparently been played on Jean Arthur. But it turns out that the joke is on him and a suspenseful situation becomes preposterous. The elaborate hoax seems beyond the capabilities of its practitioners. And the comment that suggests that the ring of crooks is entirely too large is accurate. The film oscillates between noir and screwball comedy and the two genre compete with each other. The film never decides what it wants to be and ends up being a generic midair collision.

An overly confident crime reporter (JOEL McCREA) and a clever actress (JEAN ARTHUR) must match wits against an even more clever art thief (REGINALD OWEN) who poses as a theatrical producer to cover his real proclivities as a thief. His theater is staging a play with heavy military artillery to disguise the noise of his thieves blasting a tunnel into the bank.Some crisp dialog and some nice performances aren't enough to conceal that this is pretty flimsy material. Still, it does manage to show that both McCrea and Arthur had a natural flair for light material tinged with a hint of mystery.Unfortunately, the script involving stolen art work and the attempted theft of the Sunburst Diamond from a bank vault, doesn't permit either one to create more than one-dimensional characters and after an original start, the story runs out of wacky ideas and turns serious before it reverts to comedy again.McCrea and Arthur play their roles as though they were imitating the Nick and Nora Charles brand of humor in comedy with mystery. With stronger material, this would have worked. THOMAS MITCHELL is good as a newspaper man who fires and hires McCrea in moments of great exasperation.It's light stuff and highly forgettable except for the charm of the two stars.