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This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I'd give this one a 5/10 if it wasn't for some of the unique things going on. Some of it is just plain cheeky. For example, I think the name "Big News" was given to the film to confuse people with the play "Good News" that was made into a film the following year. The opening score even has some of the music from "Good News" in it, though cleverly disguised.This one is an early talkie, plus it apparently was made on the cheap at Pathe, so the entire film basically takes place in two rooms - The news room of driven but often drunken reporter Steve Banks (Robert Armstrong), and a speakeasy that is a front (it must be, there are never any customers!) for a drug dealing operation run by Joe Reno (Sam Hardy).Banks likes to go drinking with O'Neill (Wade Botellier), a drunken discredited and thus ex reporter, and Steve's absentee home life has his reporter wife (Carole Lombard as Margaret) coming to the newsroom to tell Steve she is calling their marriage quits. Meanwhile, Joe Reno is worried that Banks is going to expose his dope peddling operation, and calls the newspaper to say he's been drunk and disorderly and bothering the nonexistent customers at his completely illegal business. The paper fires him.Banks reacts by going to Reno's speakeasy with his drunken friend (WHY DOES HE NEED THIS GUY?) and HE ACTUALLY LETS HIM IN!!!. Reno then unintentionally tips his hand to Banks who gets the evidence he needs and writes up an expose on Reno's operation. This dawns on Reno AFTER Banks leaves.Banks has been fired. Reno knows this. For some reason he goes to where Banks used to work - Banks might have given the story to a completely different paper and never returned - and frames him for a crime of which he is easily absolved. Plus Reno is seen by everybody including Banks AND the cops AND everybody knows Reno had a motive to do what he did. What an idiot! I'll let you watch the terrible print that is available and see what happens.Why am I disrespecting Carole Lombard? Because she is a mere shadow of the actress she'll be just five years later. But part of it really isn't her fault. The lines she is given are ridiculous and actually sound like the stuff of title cards from the 1910s. She is either tall statuesque and silent or overacting hysterically. But she improves tremendously in just this year. Her next film, Racketeer, is much better. But you would never guess by this one performance that she is the member of the cast people are most likely to remember almost 90 years later.There is one weird angle that you would never see after the production code. I guess to fill up time there is a part for an overweight lonely hearts reporter - Helen Ainsworth as Vera - who dresses in men's' clothing and does a kind of risqué vaudeville comedy routine between scenes to lighten the mood. The paper editor warns her "Don't be gay on my time!". Only in the precode era, and probably only in this first full year of talking film. Recommended for the goofiness of it all.

The snap, crackle and pop you are hearing isn't your cereal bowl. It's the soundtrack of this nearly 90 year old film that is trying really fast to capture the magic of the Broadway play "The Front Page". The only thing it really offers is a glimpse into the early days of sound films and early appearances of future stars Robert Armstrong ("King Kong") and 30's superstar Carole Lombard, here without that unique "e" at the end of her first name. This deals with the daily goings on at an oddly run news room where there seems to be more drinking going on and playing around than actual journalism. Static camera work can't help a lot of pre-code dialog, much of it recited by an initially funny butch newspaper woman who is told by the editor not to be so "gay". After a while, this obvious novice becomes a real pest. Lombard really gets nothing juicy to work with as Armstrong's divorce seeking wife, while he really overacts.

Steve Banks is a hard-drinking newspaper reporter. His wife Margaret, a reporter for a rival paper, threatens to divorce him if he doesn't quit the drinking that is compromising his career. Steve pursues a story about drug dealers even when his editor fires him. When the editor is murdered, Steve is accused of the killing. But Steve has an ace up his sleeve that may save him from the electric chair. Does this sound like a comedy? That's where IMDb puts it. It's a weird and dumb movie.

Robert Armstrong and Carole Lombard star in this early talky about the newspaper business. Armstrong plays an obnoxious drunk who, inexplicably, Lombard loves. He constantly shoots off his mouth and you wonder why the paper puts up with him. By the end of the film, however, he's redeemed himself and shows that he's a darn find newspaper man.The film is odd in the way it portrays Armstrong as a relatively high-functioning and lovable alcoholic. In some ways, it seems to excuse his addiction and presents a very odd and convoluted message. It's also odd in that one of the characters seems to be that of a very manly lesbian. Both are things you never would have seen in a Hollywood film once the toughened Production Code was enacted in mid-1934--when alcoholism needed to be punished and lesbians needed to vanish.So is the film any good? Well, in spots it's quite good and in others it lets the viewer down. A few of the performances are poor (such as when the murder is discovered near the end of the film) but the overall plot is engaging and worth seeing. But, for 1929, it's actually quite good--had it been made a year or two later, I would have given it a slightly lower score.For folks like me who simply watch too many movies, it also was a thrill to see Tom Kennedy play a SMART policeman—as he almost always played very stupid ones!