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Mr. and Mrs. North
Married sleuths (Gracie Allen, William Post Jr.) find a corpse in their closet and round up suspects.
Release : | 1942 |
Rating : | 6 |
Studio : | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, |
Crew : | Art Direction, Set Decoration, |
Cast : | Gracie Allen William Post Jr. Paul Kelly Rose Hobart Virginia Grey |
Genre : | Comedy Mystery |
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hyped garbage
It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.
In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.
After having just finished watching this picture, I came and read all the reviews here on IMDb. And it delights me to no end to discover that my own opinion is universally shared: George Burns should have been cast as Mr. North. I'm usually the contrarian and it is rare indeed when my opinion puts me in the majority. But I'm delighted to be in the majority here. Usually Gracie gets all the praise when it comes to Burns & Allen, it is really nice to see George get his due. Because, yes, this movie sorely needed George Burns. I'm truly glad it's so obvious to everyone.Now I've never encountered the "real" 'Mr. and Mrs. North', whether that be on the printed page or the television screen. But I get the gist of what was going on here. The idea was clearly to take a known comic star and bring her own brand of comedy to an already existing property, and to hell with the fact that she's nothing like the original character. It reminds me very much of the Marx Brothers doing 'Room Service'. And in this case, it wasn't a horrible idea; Gracie carries it off pretty well. But if you're going to do it, *do* it! Go all the way, and bring in George as well. He probably didn't fit their idea of Mr. North, but so what? If Gracie didn't match the original concept of Mrs. North, then it should be no problem if George didn't match the original Mr. North. OK, so the movie would have been more 'Mr. and Mrs. Burns' than 'Mr. and Mrs. North'. But so what? It would have been a better, funnier film. And as it was, it was really 'Mrs. Burns and Mr. North'.But other than that casting blunder, my only other real complaint with the film is that the story is almost impossible to follow. A big part of the problem is that there are a *lot* of characters, and yet very little exposition. It is really, really hard to keep track of just who all the characters *are*, let alone how they might fit into the murder. The director needed to do something about this.But beyond these complaints, I thought it was a fun little movie. If you don't go in with expectations too high, it is a quite pleasant diversion. No masterpiece, to be sure, but quite enjoyable. With George, it could have been great. Pity.
After tracking down and watching the wonderfully entertaining Gracie Allen Murder Case I learned that Gracie had starred in yet another comedy mystery, so I tracked that down as well. 20 minutes in, I stopped watching. 20 minutes isn't that long (although it seemed it) but the movie is only a little over an hour, so it seems long enough to comment on.Everything about that 20 minutes was awful. While The Gracie Allen Murder Case was simply Gracie doing her shtick with a mystery around the edges, this movie attempts to make her an actual character whose actions relate to the story. This means she can't be quite as goofy and has to spend more time on practical dialogue. So she's not as funny.She is, however, as stupid, and that, combined with a complete lack of chemistry with the actor playing her husband, is a huge problem, because you can't figure out why he would marry her, or why he wouldn't have divorced her since. George Burns always managed to walk that fine line between annoyance and bemusement, but this guy can't do it. If they weren't going to use Burns (which they should have) then they needed a comedic actor on Gracie's level rather than some B-movie stiff.The direction is awful. Pacing and performances are inert. The script is also quite poor, with weak dialogue. I have read in other user reviews here that the mystery itself might be interesting, but I don't see how it could be enough to make up for the movie's flawed presentation.
Mr. and Mrs. North discover a body and the rest of the film consists of them trying to convince others they had nothing to do with it as well as to help discover the murderer. During this time, Mrs. North (Gracie Allen) acts like an annoying dingbat.This is a decent little mystery film in the same tradition as the Thin Man films and the writing is pretty good, However, I am amazed by the odd casting job and wish IMDb could clue us in to why this was done. For the one and only time, Gracie Allen appears without her husband George Burns. Instead, some no-name actor (William Post Jr.) plays her husband and Gracie essentially plays the same character she played with George. This is pretty weird and the chemistry doesn't quite work because of this. You just keep expecting George to come stepping onto the screen.Overall, it's an odd little curio that's a decent time-passer but not a lot more.
Although Gracie Allen outdid herself in the Gracie Allen Murder Case, this film has Gracie solving the mystery in her own inimitable fashion. Her conclusions, as only she can reach them.