Fast-paced film filled with snappy dialog and star performances by Spencer Tracy as a not-too-swift cop and Joan Bennett as a hash-house waitress with plenty on the ball. Story centers on their unlikely romance and the colorful people around them, mostly her nitwit sister (Marion Burns) who's involved with a mobster.While Tracy pursue Bennett, the sister marries a sap (George Chandler) to escape a mobster boyfriend (George Walsh) who has escaped from jail. He and his gang try to pressure her into helping rob the bank she works in. The sister lives with her husband's paralyzed father (Henry B. Walthall) who plays in important part in the story.Tracy's beat is the waterfront, where he is plagued by a comically ever-drunk fisherman (Will Stanton) and a dopey partner (Adrian Morris). There's a funny scene where Tracy intervenes on a fight where Stanton is accused of smacking customers (Billy Bevan, Bert Hanlon) with a large fish. As the argument escalates with the men sniping over what kind of fish it is, Tracy is the one who ends up with the fish in his face.Co-stars include J. Farrell MacDonald as Bennett's father, Noel Madison as "Baby Face" the thug, Roger Imhof as the guy with the dog, Phil Tead as the radio salesman, Frank Moran as the spitter, Jesse De Vorska as the tall thug, and Russ Powell as the burper.Not to be missed.

Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett, years before making Minnelli's "Father of the Bride" together, here are "Me and My Gal," a story of a policeman and this flirtatious young thing working in a diner near the wharf. When Spencer, along with another lawman, saves a drunk from drowning, he is promoted to detective. A gang of wise-guys robs a bank, one of which just so happens to love Joan's sister. They are caught and thrown in the clink, but, when he escapes, Joan's sister takes him in to their place, in their attic. (She lives with her father.) Joan's father is a war veteran who can't speak, but can communicate in an unusual way. Although Joan spars a lot with Spencer, she grows very fond of him, even going so far as to on a few dates with him. They do make a very enticing couple, with his witty one-liners and her zesty replies. There's a minor subplot of the drunk, who's seen almost throughout the whole film, and while his antics wear a little thin, the actor's very good at being "crocked." He can barely stand up in all of his scenes. This is a very diverting, fun and exciting movie with Spencer Tracy, who always knew how to draw the viewer into his world. "Me and My Gal" is a good way to spend time relaxing with good actors and an entertaining movie.

This 1932 pre-code movie moved from being a comedy to a drama over the course of the movie. It has Spencer Tracy as a policeman who meets a waitress in a diner played by a very young Joan Bennett. The beginning of the movie appears to focus on a drunkard who keeps loitering in the diner and causing havoc there. The plot then changes to a former boyfriend of Joan Bennett's sister character who is arrested and imprisoned and then escapes. Joan's sister still harbors a torch for the bad guy even though she marries a somewhat nerdish man. Spencer tries to romance Joan and they have a date in her house which featured a scene where their internal thoughts in their minds are expressed when they are verbally talking to each other. Joan also "shakes" her bottom in a scene when she is listening to music from a phonograph. Joan's sister escaped convict guy later hides in a room in Joan's house and his whereabouts are exposed by a dog and a paralyzed mute veteran who lives in the house. Spencer and Joan are able to decipher the paralyzed mute veteran's Morse code message and Spencer shoots and kills the convict. Spencer decides not to press charges against Joan's sister for helping out the convict. There is a bit of a mating dance made between Spencer and Joan throughout the movie and they get married at the end. Not a great movie, but an interesting one to see how more liberal movies were before the Code was instituted.

"Me and My Gal" is an ingratiating pre-Code comedy-drama enhanced by spirited banter between Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett who play two young people feeling each other out as potential mates. Bennett is surprisingly good as a wise-cracking, down-to-earth waitress who speaks her mind and can easily hold her own against Tracy's New York City cop. The pre-Code era's lack of pretense about sexuality makes their impassioned kiss in the diner -- as the two knock over items on the lunch counter -- all the more humorous. Bennett, both impressed and amused by Tracy's kiss, responds: "If you're gonna kiss me like that, you're gonna have to marry me." It's a magical little moment that caused the passage of time since 1932 to drop away and left me there with them to enjoy the fun.A sub-plot involves Bennett's newly married sister, a good girl who nevertheless can't resist her bad boy gangster ex-boyfriend. When he needs to hide from the police, she installs him in a spare bedroom, under the nose of her disabled father-in-law who is confined to a wheelchair, can't speak a word and communicates only by blinking his eyes in Morse code. Later, when everything gets resolved, Tracy tells the father-in-law that the daughter-in-law is a good kid at heart in spite of what she did, expressing pre-Code generosity for forgiveness and tolerance, even in sexual transgressions with gangsters.