Gable and Rosalind Russell play a couple of jewel thieves who meet in ..... well, guess where, and keep running into each other thereafter. It's a fairly formulaic film carried on the charms of the leads; director Clarence Brown can't overcome the MGM gloss to provide the screwball details that the first half of the film really needs, although Peter Lorre as a shady and unctuous tramp steamer captain is a lot of fun. I have the feeling Miss Russell replaced Myrna Loy at some stage in the production and the first couple of reels show damage. Clarence Brown directs the comedy bits for everyone but the two leads, a telling indictment of his opinion of their chop. Even worse, William H. Daniel's high-lit camerawork makes Miss Russell look a trifle jowly.

Any movie that features Clark Gable in a pith helmet has got to be great, right?Well... kind of...The first two-thirds of "They Met In Bombay" is simply fantastic. Clark Gable is at his cocky-best as a con artist trying to steal a rare jewel, and Rosalind Russell is gorgeous as his love-interest/rival. The story moves along at a brisk pace and soon the two stars find they have more in common than they knew… and that they might be falling in love. The beauty parlor scene is hilarious, as is the scene where the two leads are stuck in an elevator. The movie is funny, engaging, romantic and sweet… classic Hollywood at its best. Sadly, the final third of the movie takes a strange and sudden turn and the story falls apart as a result.Most of the movie is a joy, with Gable and Russell romancing on the lam, and Peter Lorre turns up as some money-loving Chinaman crackpot, still speaking with his exaggerated coo, but then the movie swerves off the road and over the embankment. Gable impersonates a Canadian soldier as part of a scam and is then remanded to a military base and denied any access to the outside world. Still being mistaken for a soldier he is thrown into battle, where his sweet but unlikely heroism is almost as hard to believe as Russell's presence on the sidelines.Finally, Gable is awarded the Victoria Cross- the military's highest honor- only to discover he's been double-crossed by his true love. But that's no problem, because the serious part of the story is evidently over, and Gable is able to sneak in two bizarre and implausible twists in the final 90 seconds of the story. The awkward, contrived ending negates most of the movie's nice moments… they met in Bombay, and they should have stayed there.GRADE: C

Enjoyable film up until the Japanese arrive. Then it takes a drastic turn for the worse due to the "Japanese" armored cars and worst of all, the WWI German helmets that were repainted and worn backwards!!! Peter Loree's character Capt. Chang is charming and convincing. The sets are quite good; although the exterior shots are evidently Southern California. The lines are decent, the acting is good and the dialog is catchy despite the obvious contemporary aspects. The action scene towards the end where the British are fighting the Japanese is pretty lame to say the least. Aside from the obvious; those helmets are really distracting, the way the men were falling about was laughable and detracted from the seriousness of Gable's heroic deed. The fact that he is awarded a VC for that deed is ridiculous as I'm sure the British wouldn't have done that as he was not legitimately in the army and therefore not eligible. Despite these obvious faults and drawbacks, it's a good old fun Sunday afternoon film.

It was great to see another little remembered Gable film made before he went off to war. When he was paired with Rosalind Russell in "China Seas", they met in Hong Hong and traveled by ship to Singapore. Here, they meet in Bombay and travel by ship to Hong Kong, under quite different circumstances, as fugitive jewel thieves. In general form, this film reminds me of the later "The Big Steal", a chase thriller-screwball romantic comedy combo in an exotic locale, involving a man and woman, unknown to each other, looking for the same thing. Toward the end, it turns into a forerunner of "The Great Imposter", with Gable successfully fooling the British Hong Kong garrison into believing he is a British officer, who happens to be passing through. This gets him into more hot water than he bargained for, as the Japanese invade Hong Kong(as they actually did less than a year later!). Peter Lorre doesn't fool anyone as the supposedly Chinese captain of the ship taking the thieves to Hong Kong. This is mostly Gable's film. Sometimes, I wondered if I was looking at a deglamourized Heddy Lamarr instead of Rosalind Russell. All in all, an entertaining, if silly, romp, with Gable still looking in peak form and seeming to enjoy himself.