VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

SimonJack Most movie fans would probably enjoy this film as a good comedy- romance. It is that. Those who are drawn to history will appreciate the film also for its portrayal of a real prominent person, David Garrick. And, people who love the stage and theatre will enjoy the display of acting and actors of the mid-18th century. "The Great Garrick" is all of this and more. Considering some of the history of the time, and the plot and script of this film, I think it has one more attribute – satire. Nicely nestled in the comedy and romance, and the ruse of the plot, is a wonderful spoofing of the stage and acting of the day. Most notably, that of the French and the Comedy Francaise. The cast for this film all are excellent. Brian Aherne was a leading man of the 1930s and gives a superb performance as David Garrick. From the historical accounts, Aherne's Garrick seems to nail the character. Garrick was the best actor on the English stage in the mid-18th century. He had an ego, naturally, and he was mocked by some for his vanity. But he had great talent and he enjoyed the adulation of audiences everywhere. He also had many inconspicuous charities, and was a great producer and theater manager. Mostly, he was known for breaking with the long-standing French-imposed method of acting. Until his time, actors were pompous and gave bombastic recitations of their lines. Garrick introduced natural delivery and was an immediate success and overnight star of stage. The film shows these differences with wonderful spoofing of the French. Garrick explains to Monsieur Picard, how he had discovered the plot against him staged by the Comedy Francaise. Picard, the president of the French theater, indeed exaggerated his movements while posing as the innkeeper of the Adam and Eve Inn. Garrick showed how a real innkeeper would walk, stooped after many years of climbing stairs, versus Picard's majestic strutting. Then he showed how a real waiter carried a tray – with one hand, versus the way the stage crew handled it with both hands. Edward Everett Horton plays Tubby, Garrick's valet and man for all tasks. Horton was one of the best supporting actors of the day, especially for comedy. He shines in his role here. The up and coming Olivia de Havilland shows signs of her great acting ability, playing Germaine. Melville Cooper is wonderful as Picard, overacting the role just enough to cement the satire of the film. Others of the cast have even more exaggeration. A young Lana Turner is a maid. Although Aherne stood six feet, three inches and was tall for the 20th century, Garrick was just under average height of English males in 1750. He was five feet, four inches. But he was a handsome, talented man who fast made friends. He was a ladies man for a time and had a long relationship with a leading Irish actress of the day, Peg Woffington. While Garrick helped improve her skills, she wouldn't be tied down in marriage. Garrick did have a number of love affairs until, at age 32, he married Eva Marie Veigel in 1749. They had a 30- year happy marriage that lasted until his death.Besides his acting, Garrick was a poet and playwright. He produced and directed plays and soon became the co-manager of the Royal Theater at Drury Lane. His management of Drury Lane not only saved and revived that theater, but led to new techniques and better stage quality of sets, design, and professional production. Garrick was equally adept at comedy and tragedy. With his slightly shorter physical stature, he gradually moved out of the more youthful roles to play more mature parts. Garrick had attended school in Litchfield, home of Samuel Johnson. At age 19, he enrolled in Johnson's Edial Hall School. After Johnson's school closed, he and Garrick traveled to London together. They would be friends for life. Garrick began his acting career at 24 in 1741, as an anonymous replacement for an actor who had fallen ill. He stayed with a road company but kept his acting a secret from his family for a while. Acting was a lowly regarded profession at the time. But, with his title role in "Richard III," he won instant recognition. Within six months, he had 18 roles and had become the talk of London. Unlike his friend Samuel Johnson, who seemed to live and work on the edge of poverty for most of his life, Garrick soon became prosperous from his acting, writing and related work. Poet Alexander Pope saw Garrick in three plays early on and declared, "That young man never had his equal as an actor, and he will never have a rival." The Encyclopedia Britannica says, "Garrick, though highly strung and sensitive, had a strong vein of common sense and remarkable staying power." Garrick was the first actor allowed to be buried in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey. Two others have since been buried their – Henry Irving in 1905, and Laurence Olivier in 1989. This is a wonderful comedy-romance and satire, with several prominent actors and up and comers before the mid-20th century. Movie fans and friends should enjoy it.

csteidler Brian Aherne stars as David Garrick, renowned 18th century actor, in this wild little tale that is certainly no stodgy biopic but rather "a romantic adventure that might have happened," as the picture's introduction tells us. Invited to Paris to perform with France's famous Comédie-Française, Garrick stops over a day out from Paris at a quaint country inn. The players of the French troupe, meanwhile, have already occupied said inn, posing as staff and guests, and have plotted out an elaborate ruse designed to embarrass Garrick—who, they have been informed, has made disparaging remarks about French acting. Ensuing events include plenty of table-turning...and the plot is stirred delightfully when plucky runaway Olivia de Havilland, her carriage broken down on the side of the road, arrives at the inn and asks for a room. Aherne is funny and dashing, pompous when necessary but also quite capable of being bewildered; de Havilland is funny and radiant and sometimes bewildered herself. The character actors filling out the cast are also outstanding— Edward Everett Horton as Aherne's valet whose duties sometimes include giving pep talks; Luis Alberni as an actor eager for his chance to play a mad scene; and especially Etienne Girardot, in a small but essential role as a stage hand who takes the Great Garrick's side. Best of all, though, is Melville Cooper, who probably never had a better role than this one: as the manager of the Comédie-Française, he is dramatic, commanding, a bit ridiculous—the perfect leader for a crew of enthusiastic but misguided actors. Oh, the costumes look great too. Good fun all the way around.

Robert J. Maxwell Brian Aherne is The Great Garrick, the famous 18th-century English actor who is all talent and ego. He's invited to perform in Paris by the famous Comedy Francaise but he demurs, thinking it infra dig, until he's persuaded to go to France and "teach the French how to act." The members of the French troupe get word of this and plan to trick Aherne by taking over a wayside inn, pretending to be the staff, and engaging in all sorts of routines designed to drive Aherne nuts. Only at the end will they reveal themselves, having convinced Aherne that they are as talented as he is.Aherne is a pretty sharp guy though and he quickly picks up on the fact that he's dealing with actors instead of waiters. I mean -- he knows an actor when he sees one. So while the troupe exhaust themselves with all kinds of antic shenanigans -- a waiter goes nuts, a duel to the death takes place in the dining room -- Aherne yawns and ignores it all.But then he makes a mistake. Olivia De Havilland shows up accidentally at the inn. Aherne takes her for just another performer in on the plot to embarrass him. They fall in love. It all ends happily.I had a tough time with it. It's based on a stage play and it shows. It isn't so much that the sets are stagy. It's that the story is played out like a filmed stage production. When an actor has something important or funny to say, he stops and turns his face to the camera. The effect is uncanny and a little unsettling. Every gesture is outlandishly broad. The viewer is quickly exhausted.And, to be honest, the plot itself may have potential but the potential isn't really developed. Maybe I'm getting cranky and losing my sense of humor. That's what my psychiatrist, Dr. Francois M. Arouet, keeps telling me, in between hints that I ought to pay my bills more regularly. I never found "Charlie's Aunt" funny either, and I have to squeeze to get a couple of smiles out of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." But I think I'm right when I claim that this play lacks much in the way of laugh power. I've always been right. Well, except once, when I thought I was wrong but it turned out I'd been right all along.Here's an example of one of many duds. Aherne and his comic sidekick, Edward Everett Horton, are about to clamber aboard a carriage, and Horton makes some remark about all the friends that Aherne has acquired over the years. "I played Shylock in Dublin," Aherne replies earnestly, "I have no friends." There is a pause for laughter.Is there anything funny in this exchange? If there is, it slipped by my apperceptive apparatus. What's amusing about Shylock in Dublin? Is there some anti-Semitic content that I'm missing? Is it that the Irish of the period were being conquered and exploited by the English and that all the English, Aherne included, were loathed in Ireland? There's nothing particularly bad about Brian Aherne's performance though. He's supposed to be a narcissistic ham and he certainly gets that across. (It's the Comedy Francaise that's ennervating.) And Olivia De Havilland as the damsel in distress is delightful. Her beauty combined in an unexpected way the darkness of her hair and eyes with the porcelain quality of her skin. Yet it's more than just her appearance. She's full of a kind of breathless virginity. She's extremely feminine. She might welcome a man as much out of a desire to nurture him as out of sheer horniness. The musical score, tinged with symbolism, is easy to listen to.Well, I'll not make any kind of final judgment because I think this is the kind of movie that might appeal to a lot of people for different reasons, while leaving some of the rest of us a little cold. If you don't get with the program after the first fifteen or twenty minutes, you might as well give up because the rest of it doesn't really go anywhere.

bkoganbing If anyone is expecting the story of the real David Garrick than this is not the film for you. According to Wikipedia, the real Garrick was rather short, but his talent added several inches in stage height and happily married to a German dancer for many years. Though I'm sure then as now the celebrated actor attracted his share of groupies. I also doubt that Garrick ever made an appearance at the Comedy Francaise as a guest artist. Mainly because Great Britain and France were at war a whole lot during the 18th century. Just as I doubt Moliere saw much of his work playing at London's Drury Lane Theater where Garrick was the managing director as well as star attraction.However The Great Garrick is a charming comedy of manners about a quick witted actor who is given an unforgettable night at a roadside inn by the Comedy Francaise. Garrick played with effortless ease by Brian Aherne and when he announces that he will be off the London stage for a while because he's going to be a guest artist at the Comedy Francaise, the crowd reacts bad. With a quick wit Garrick gets the audience on his side when he appeals to their nationalism by implying he will be giving them acting lessons. He leaves with the ringing cry of "teach the French".Of course the company of The Comedy Francaise reacts real bad when they hear that news. They resolve under managing director Melville Cooper to teach Garrick a lesson. They rent out an inn where Garrick is supposed to stop overnight and prepare a bit of theatrics for him.Aherne is tipped to it and he and valet Edward Everett Horton just act oblivious to some madcap behavior. A young woman played by Olivia DeHavilland arrives at the inn and she's running away from a proposed marriage. Aherne just thinks she's one of the players though he offers her accommodations in his suite.I think you get the idea how this is going. Though The Great Garrick has no relation at all with the real David Garrick it's not a bad film with several good comic spots. This was another costume film where Olivia got cast in and got rooted in at Warner Brothers. She's pretty and classy, but the laughs all belong to the guys. And Aherne became family for a while, soon marrying Olivia's sister Joan Fontaine shortly after The Great Garrick came out.