Motion Picture Reviews (1933)

Motion Picture Reviews Seven porting the audience away from everyday life into the realm of pure fiction. The improbabilities of the plot are a refreshing release from the necessity for rationalizing, and the jungle scenery is an antidote for prosaic surroundings. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 Delightful Very entertaining ■sr THE KING’S VACATION » » George Arliss. Direction by John G. Adolfi. Warner Bros. A lightly satirical, smoothly directed comedy in which a democratic monarch abdicates his throne for the good of his country and finds happiness in the simple life and in the discovery that his queen is a charming wife. The scenario is structurally weak and provides little opportunity for Mr. Arliss to display his powers of acting as we remember them in “Disraeli” and “Old English,” but he and Mrs. Arliss are such delightful people that one leaves the theatre satisfied with having spent an hour in their company. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 Of passing interest Little interest •w KINC KONG » » Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong. Direction by Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper. R.K.O. King Kong climaxes bizarre thrill pictures. A motion picture producer takes an expedition, including one girl, to an imaginary island to photograph Kong, gigantic ape, survival of a prehistoric era. Natives capture the girl and give her to the monster, to whom she personifies beauty. She is rescued and Kong is taken prisoner and is brought to New York for exhibition, where he escapes and causes enormous havoc. From a production angle the technique is arresting, unusual and very interesting, but as a story it is not convincing. There is too much striving for effects. Imagination will go just so far! There are many revolting scenes that leave a most unpleasant impression and the picture as a whole fails to justify itself. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 Impossible Dangerous •w LADIES THEY TALK ABOUT » » Barbara Stanwyck, Preston Foster, Lyle Talbot, Lillian Roth. Direction by Howard Bretherton and William Keighley. Warner Bros. We wish that motion pictures would talk a little less about this type of “lady” (who, after all, is not so very interesting to most people), a girl mixed up in the doings of the underworld, who becomes a murderess, and goes to prison where she falls in love with an evangelistic social worker. With this for a plot the picture is naturally just the ordinary hysterical expose of the life of a gun moll. It is indistinguishable from its many predecessors. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 Unwholesome No A LADY’S PROFESSION » » Alison Skipworth, Roland Young, Sari Maritza. From a story by Nina Wilcox Putman. Direction by Norman McLeod. Paramount. Witty and light entertainment — in which the title, evidently a catch for the curious, will disappoint those looking for something salacious. It is a farce concerned with impoverished English nobility transplanted to American soil. The Baronet buys a speakeasy, and when his more ethical sister discovers the fact, she trys to make the place respectable. Her innocent contacts with the underworld are absurdly funny. It is amusing and cannot be taken seriously, but one wishes that the excellent cast might have been seen in a less stereotyped setting. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 Passable but not No recommended THE LIFE OF JIMMY DOLAN » » Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Loretta Young, Arline MacMahon. Direction by Archie Mayo. Warner Bros.-First National. This is an average program picture leaving one no better and perhaps a little worse for having seen it. Jimmy, dissolutely celebrating a winning prize fight, accidentally kills a man. By coincidence he too is thought dead and escapes West where finally he is willing to sacrifice his lost identity to raise the farm mortgage for a pretty girl and four crippled children. It is rough and certainly brutal in spots, forced in humor, and saccharine in ending. But the direction succeeds in sustaining suspense and dread, and even interest. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., presents finished and sophisticated acting and Arline MacMahon is always a delight. But not for adolescents or children. It is too brutal, too ordinary in dialogue, and far from true to life. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 No No