Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

LeonLouisRicci Light and Breezy Depression Era Escapism. About as Inoffensive as a Movie can be. Everything is Pleasant and Pleasing to the Eye. Robert Montgomery and Maureen O' Sullivan are Pretty People in a Pretty Picture that Hardly Moves, it just sort of says OK Pretty People Do this and Do that and the Audience will Enjoy the Beauty.There is Never a Hint at Life on the Farm being Hard or Dirty ("We have more eggs than we know what to do with."). That seems like an Odd Line in a Depression where there were Food Lines and about a Quarter of the Population didn't know where their next Meal was coming from. But MGM would Argue that is the Point. This is Fantasy.So Folks Paid Their Money and were Transported to some kind of Otherland where Everyone was Sweet, Attractive, and Life was Easy. The Only Time this Fairy Tale broke its Spell and Showed Anything Resembling Real Life was at a Dinner where Everyone was Guessing what was on the Menu.

blanche-2 Robert Montgomery plays a gangster hiding out on a farm in "Hide-Out," a 1934 film also starring Maureen O'Sullivan, Edward Arnold, Elizabeth Patterson, Whitford Kane, and Mickey Rooney. With the police after him, Lucky Wilson takes off but ends up shot and unconscious. He is then found by a farmer Miller (Kane) who takes him home. There, Lucky, now calling himself by his real name, Jonathan, meets a normal American family, including an above-normal looking Pauline (Maureen O'Sullivan), who is the daughter of the house. Jonathan stretches out his recovery and begins to enjoy the idyllic life of milking cows, feeding chickens, romancing Pauline, and being sort of a big brother to her younger sibling Willie (Mickey Rooney).This is a sweet film with nothing special to recommend it except the beautiful young O'Sullivan and an amusing performance by Montgomery. In one of the best scenes, he sits at a ringside table and asks a singer out - while she's singing - and she answers him under her breath during short orchestral interludes.The end seems a little abrupt, but this is a pleasant film. If Mrs. Miller looks familiar, she was Mrs. Trumbull, the neighbor who babysat Little Ricky on "I Love Lucy."

malcolmgsw With one or two well known exceptions from the pre code era MGM could not make a decent gangster film.The first 10 minutes were great.Montgomery puts the heat on night club owners and then is wounded fleeing the cops.He flees to the country and the film changes tack.It becomes a homily about the virtues of country life and how the beauty tames the beast.The last 10 minutes are a bit livelier.However the hour in between just drags along as the redemptive ways of the country eventually wear away the rough edges of Montgomery's character.I don't know what it is but the majority of Warners films of this era still have the ability to entertain and engage the mind.Films made by MGM seem to be encased in aspic and totally boring.

Ken Peters (wireshock) This sentimental M-G-M "gangster" film works like a "Tarzan" in reverse: here the seemingly incorrigible hood played by Montgomery, urbane and a touch cynical, finds his cold heart surely melting in the warm embrace of a simple farm family and their soothing workaday life.In "Tarzan" Maureen O'Sullivan is the "outsider", and although she must adjust to life in the jungle the thrust of that story is that she "domesticates" the "ape man" even as she learns to accept the simpler pleasures of living "close to nature". Here Montgomery is the one out of his element and we find him mystified by the sounds of crickets in the evening--something almost as strange and foreign to him as the unpretentious caring ways of the Miller family. When Mom and Pop and little "don't call me" Willy (played by young Mickey Rooney) conveniently leave the farm for a day, Montgomery and O'Sullivan get to play "farm" (baling the hay, splitting wood) the same way Tarzan and Jane get to play "house" together. In both cases O'Sullivan has "tamed" the wild beast."Tarzan" was an adventure film, however--the journey takes place in the great outdoors and nature is a mirror. "Hide-out" is an inner journey, on the other hand--even as he's hauled off to prison Montgomery smiles because he's finally come "home".