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Strong and Moving!

Sorry, this movie sucks

Overrated and overhyped

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

There are a few interesting lines here like "All Men are Poligamists" but this comedy between the sexes never really comes off. This cast is a great cast in the whole but prove it takes a script to make a good movie. This one off the Warner Assembly Line proves how big an accident Casablanca was a few years later.Busby Berkley is know for musicals but directing a comedy does not seem to be his bag. The action is uneven. There is a silent slap stick quality to the car chases and train sequences. One RR crossing even looks like the same set used in Abbott & Costello Meet The Keystone Cops.Bogart really isn't much of a comedian coming off as a straight dull man who is a bit of a cad. Think he walked through this role in his sleep. The main actress, Priscilla Lane is an attractive lead, but her comedy skills are not up to other females doing comedy in this era.Overall, other than if your curious about the cast members, this is a movie to avoid. The best thing about it is it is short, obviously made as a B movie to be paired with an A Picture for Double Features.There is a little surprising grabbing by an actor of Lane's posterior in one scene which considering the codes of this era must have gotten through by accident.

The opening credits of this movie really had me fooled. So many names that led me to expect delightful entertainment. OK, Wayne Morris is obnoxious with his immature, boisterous, steamroll-over-everyone-with-no-regard-for-their-feelings, routine. But this movie's also got: Priscilla Lane, who's always charming. Penny Singleton, very funny but sadly underused apart from the Blondie series. Hugh Herbert, that giggly goofball. Oh yeah, Humphrey Bogart's in it too. Plus, the script is based on a story by Faith Baldwin, and I've enjoyed other movies based on her work.So I was all set to enjoy this one, until I realized early on that it was gonna be one of those movies where the Ambitious Career Gal is taught to stop fighting her True Womanly Nature, which of course means she lets an aggressive doofus wear her down 'til she agrees to marry him, then sublimates and channels her ambitions through him, to help him get off his lazy butt and make something of himself. 'Cause women should stand by (and behind) their man and use their intelligence and talents to help *him* succeed. Be content in your supportive role and never seek glory or take credit. Also, be a mother to your infantile husband. Sounds fun, right? Nice moments of truth where she expresses her boredom with suburbia, the cozy/stifling home, and simple-minded neighbours inane converstions she must put up with. She's wasted there. Her brains and vitality require big-city opportunities and more stimulating company. After he squanders an opportunity she's arranged for him, she leaves him, supposedly to make him take *his* career more seriously and win her back. What then? He'll have more drive, and make her "proud", but she'll still be bored hanging around the house waiting for him to return from work. (And can't even help him openly because his ego must be preserved!) Wouldn't envy and frustration set in? Living vicariously through somebody else is never a good idea. I did like that she wasn't portrayed as a Greedy Wench, pursuing wealth. They were comfortable. Which was part of the problem because she didn't want to be comfortable or complacent. She was bursting with ideas, ambitious to DO something, to create, invent, give life purpose and meaning. And then - inexplicable, implausible "love".Probably the most disturbing thing about Men Are Such Fools, is the way Wayne Morris "woos" Priscilla Lane. Basically he's abusive but we're supposed to find his persistence cute. Pursuing the poor woman no matter how often she says no (girls never really mean "no", they just wanna be chased!) and acting like a petulant child whenever she pays attention to something other than him. But my favorite example of his touching devotion? Maybe the part where he risks her life driving like a maniac and ignores her pleas to slow down. She'll have to agree to marry him first! Tee-hee! Followed by the scare-tactic of stopping the car on the train tracks, just as a train's coming. But don't worry, he knows the train will stop before it hits them. (He didn't know another would come along from the opposite direction and almost kill them for really-real, but it's still funny right?) If the silly stubborn female would just know what's good for her and do as he says, he wouldn't have to go to these lengths! He finally wears her down in this hilarious, heartwarming scene: They're at a pool party and he dunks her *repeatedly* underwater until she agrees to marry him. Any possible humour you might find in this situation is undermined by the fact that he's yanking her roughly by the HAIR and barely giving her time to breathe between dunks. While the other partygoers stand around laughing. Nobody seems to think this might be a tad dangerous or, um, PSYCHOTIC. It's truly disturbing to witness. Trust me, the level of brutality in this scene goes WAY beyond "playful" pool hijinks.After literally making it impossible for her to breathe, he takes her breath away some more, by forcing a kiss. Naturally, she's starry-eyed and ready to set a wedding date! So we get a nice juxtaposition of sex & violence with that wonderful message that women are slaves to their hormones AND enjoy being roughed up - This is the best way to make a woman obey, er, I mean, show a woman you love her. Yes, women stay with abusive men and believe their possessiveness/controlling behaviour/violence = love. Gotta blame movies like this one, for helping to brainwash both men and women into thinking these kinds of relationships are, not only normal, but *ideal*. I just love being confronted with disturbing, depressing issues in romantic comedies!It's bizarre how this couple alternates between excessive "comic" violence/forced almost manic "joy", and other moments where they glare at each other with what seems to be intense hatred/resentment. I wonder if the author or actors were trying to sneak in subversive hints that this is indeed a scary, unhealthy relationship...under the surface veneer of obeying the Hays Code and enforcing gender role "norms" and the illusion of romantic comedy. I'd like to think so! I only recommend this movie to fans of the cast/crew, or students of film history. My goal is to watch every single (existing) movie from the silent era to 1959. Everyone needs an ambition in life, right?

If you want to see a truly bizarre '30s flick, catch this one. Wayne Morris and Priscilla Lane star as a couple who work in the city and then move to the suburbs. He keeps working, she stays home. She has a maid. She picks him up from the 5:15 train each day. She hates it and leaves him and goes back to work in New York. Then she informs her husband and the world she's leaving for Paris with a friend. Morris chases after her. The friend, by the way, is Bogar before he became a star. This film was a programmer, slotted in as a second or even third feature on a single bill. Morris is a horrible actor and thoroughly unconvincing as a businessman. Lane channels Ginger Rogers throughout, which is unsettling. Bogart merely treads water. And the film is poorly written. While it was billed as a comedy, it is more of a drama -- with cartoon music constantly playing in the background. Filmed almost entirely on the lot, it gets a little jarring during a brief car chase, the footage of which doesn't match the rest of the photography. If you watch it, take it for the curio that it is. Better yet, watch a BLONDIE flick instead. Better plots, better acting, more believable. Blondie was played by an actress named Penny Singleton, who just so happens o appear in this flick.

"Men Are Such Fools" pretty much tries to live up to it's title, as all the male leads are flawed characters, with Wayne Morris heading the list as former college football star turned ad agency wonder boy Jimmy Hall. Right out of the gate he's shown chasing pretty Linda Lawrence (Priscilla Lane), a secretary with dreams of her own about making it big. Working for the Americo Corporation, she has an idea for a product called Fruit Tea; had she waited a couple of decades she might have come up with Snapple.The boss at Americo is played by Hugh Herbert, the "woo woo" actor that I recall being caricatured in one of those Warner Brothers cartoons along with Bogey, Robinson and all the rest. His comical double talk contains some gems if you listen real close, and he even signs off a handwritten note with his woo woo trademark.Although he had already achieved starring roles in some minor films, Humphrey Bogart appears third billed as Henry Galleon, an ad agency exec with an eye for Miss Lawrence. Bogey's portrayal pretty much typifies a playboy and a cad, and his pursuit of Linda even after she marries Hall qualifies him as heal of the year.Jimmy Hall comes across as a self centered boob, usually embarrassing himself into the center of attention where Linda is concerned. His behavior at the Galleon party should have been enough to send Miss Lawrence packing, but somehow they wound up getting hitched. The film's habit of having the romantic leads fall in and out of character kept this viewer somewhat off balance, especially when Mrs. Hall abruptly decides that her comfortable life in the suburbs is no longer enough and leaves her husband because he's not more ambitious! Where did that come from? You'll be reminded by the film how long it took for married movie couples to be shown sleeping together; the first time we see the Hall's as newlyweds, they're in separate beds! By film's finale, the Hall's are reconciled after Linda leads Jimmy on a cross city chase following a radio broadcast in which she pitches her tea for Americo. By this time it's already been at least three years since her first ad proposal, just one more disjointed aspect of the story that came off as a bit odd. Well, if it didn't bother the writers, I guess I won't let it bother me."Men Are Such Fools" is a lighthearted diversion that has it's moments, worth a viewing if you can find it since it's not commercially available. You might have to source it from a private collector, otherwise it might be a long wait to catch it on a cable channel. Fans of Morris and Lane can also find them top billed together in "Love, Honor and Behave" and "Brother Rat"; the busy pair made all three films in 1938.