Afouotos
Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.
Zandra
The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
Billy Ollie
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
classicsoncall
Well this one's a puzzler. My instincts tell me this movie was supposed to be a comedy but nothing in the delivery convinced me that was the case. Seeing Hitchcock's name as director in the opening credits also added to my quandary. Not known for comedy in general, Hitch would often use humor and light touches in his dramatic films, but even that seemed to be absent here. The picture just didn't work for me. Maybe if Cary Grant had the lead here opposite someone like Ann Sheridan or Rosalind Russell (See "His Girl Friday"), they might have pulled it off. The film needed a lot more energy than what was provided by the principals here.The main problem I guess I have is with Carole Lombard's character, Annie Krausheimer Smith. In the early going she managed to bother me with her clingy attachment to husband David (Robert Montgomery), but then when the story's reveal occurred about their 'non-marriage', she went totally in the opposite direction. Had the couple any sort of chemistry to begin with they might have made the situation work to comedic effect, but the whole time I was waiting for it, the humor never materialized.I did have one sit up and take notice moment though. How about that scene where Jeff Custer's (Gene Raymond) father called Annie 'white trash'! Wow, was that the first time the term was ever used in a movie? I had that term pegged as a more recent colloquialism and here it turns out to be at least seventy five years old! Well I'm generally in the minority on most of Hitchcock's directorial efforts. Notwithstanding the man's reputation as one of the best, I usually encounter something that just doesn't click with me in a lot of his pictures. On that score, most everything didn't click with me here, and I'm tempted to say that there's probably more humor in the 2007 movie of the same name starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. And in that one, they're a pair of assassins!
utgard14
Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombard play a quarrelsome married couple. One day they discover they're not actually married after all due to a legal technicality. Montgomery hesitates about getting remarried right away, which sets Lombard off and she leaves him. He spends the rest of the movie trying to get her back, even after she's started dating his law partner.A rare foray into a full-on comedy, this is one of Alfred Hitchcock's most divisive movies. People seem to have strong opinions about it one way or the other. The first time I saw it I hated it. It took repeated viewings over the years before I began to appreciate it more, though I still think it's flawed. I just recently watched it with a friend who had never seen it before and knew nothing of its reputation. She hated it like I did the first time and for the same reason: it's hard to buy the two lead characters as in love or care about them getting back together due to how they treat each other. Carole's character is annoyingly childish. She does little in her performance to soften that. Montgomery is better, getting most of the funny scenes in the movie. The scene in the restaurant with the cat and the soup was my favorite. It's an enjoyable movie but not for all tastes. Try to lower your expectations going in, particularly if you have high expectations due to it being a Hitchcock film.
edwagreen
Routine fanfare with famed director Alfred Hitchcock, who attempts to make a comedy in this 1941 farce.Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombard play a couple, who have a spat and later learn that their marriage is invalid.When Montgomery hesitates to marry Lombard, the fun starts with her throwing him out of the house, as he spends the rest of the film trying to win her back. Things become complicated when his partner,played by a lively Gene Raymond, attempts to take advantage of the situation and get Lombard for himself. Raymond is highly effective here and is memorable is his drunken scene.A fine supporting cast enriches the film with Jack Carson, a buddy of Montgomery, always at the health spa, attempting to give advice, as well as Philip Merivale and Lucile Watson, as Raymond's ultra- conservative parents from the south, both of whom are caught up in the various situations.With it all, it's pretty much routine.
dimplet
If you are looking for a silly, high speed, comedy with artificial acting, you're in the wrong place. Try Bringing Up Baby or some of the other over the top screwball comedies of the period.Frankly, I think Hitchcock was wise to avoid some of these excesses. The acting is fairly natural, and the pace relaxed. Yet there are still some laugh out loud funny moments.Why did Hitch make this? Why does a serious actor like Jack Nicholson make a comedy like Going South? It's not that they want to become comedians, but that they need to be able to add a comic touch to serious roles when appropriate.I think Hitch made Mr. and Mrs. Smith for the same reason: to master comic timing and nuance, so he could apply to other films. We see a wide palette of comedy in this movie, from subtle to slapstick. And I think Hitch demonstrated an understanding of how to move an audience to laughter without becoming hammy.The problem is mainly in he script. It is difficult to keep this premise going for 95 minutes. The 1952 Fred Allen movie We're Not Married took 86 minutes to apply the same premise to five couples.This would have been a pleasant enough flick to watch on a Saturday afternoon in the days before DVDs, VHS, or even TV. Studios needed to crank them out, and this would have been a satisfactory product. And remember, Alfred Hitchcock was not the household name in America he was to become.I think people here are being way too hard on Hitch. A good director doesn't want to always be making the same movie, even if audiences do. I think Hitch succeeded in what he set out to do. And then he moved on to make the classy movies he is famous for today.What made the Hitch thrillers distinctive was their precisely nuanced wry humor even in the most dramatic scenes, like Cary Grant driving drunk as a skunk down the hill to Glen Cove in North by Northwest. Hitch's style sparked a whole crime caper genre from other directors that included Charade, Gambit, Mirage and Goldfinger.And it all started with an exercise in comedy called Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
