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Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

... because you just might get it! It's rather predictable, yet interesting. Three women combine finances so they can rent a spacious apartment in a wealthy part of Budapest and use that apartment as a jumping off point so that they all can get their individual wishes. Constance Bennett plays Yoli, a woman with sophisticated tastes and ways, but no money. Loretta Young plays Susie Schmidt, a girl in the chorus of a local show, and Janet Gaynor plays Baroness Martha, a woman of noble blood whose family lost everything in WWI, so now she has to live off selling neckties on the street along with a hodgepodge of odd jobs.One of the first thing the women do is practice an old superstition. They sit down in whatever room of the apartment they happen to be in, count the corners of the room, and then say their wish aloud. Yoli asks for a rich husband who will buy her jewels and furs, Susie asks to be independent of men with a shop of her own. You can detect a trace of bitterness in her voice as she says this, as though she has been burned by romance before and often. Finally, in the bathroom, Martha says she is going to ask for the impossible - a good home, a husband to take care of, and children.Their first visitor is John Barta, a wealthy man whose work takes him all over the world, but for now he is on vacation in Budapest and keeping company with the seemingly aloof Yoli. Along with Barta is Karl Lanyi (Tyrone Power). One smile from him and it's time for family values for Susie. Her Independence Day spirit evaporates before your eyes. As for Martha, she gets a job to replace all of her part time jobs by being the assistant to an illusionist, Alan Mowbrey as the very amusing Paul Sandor who can't tell when he is performing and when he is having an actual conversation.By my last paragraph do you think you can tell how this will turn out? I will tell you now you do not! Watch and find out. I will tell you that every girl get's their spoken wish, but not the desires of their heart. Only Martha winds up truly happy. I've always said if you are going to watch the films of 1936 you better be prepared to deal with the values of 1936, so the lesson here seems to be that the only honorable ambition of any girl is for a traditional family. Just wanting a rich man for what he can give you or a career so you don't have to deal with a man in the first place is just not honorable. Not my words or beliefs, but ideas coming from a script written almost 80 years ago that Fox revamped from various angles from time to time over the next three decades.An interesting aside - Fox's past, present, and future are all here. Loretta Young was brought over from Zanuck's 20th Century films to do this, and she wound up a big star. Don Ameche is fifth billed, but will wind up being one of Fox's biggest stars with that charm that was just so unique to him. Tyrone Power? He's seventh billed and one of the few assets left over from the original Fox Films, but that disarming smile, even playing a pure heel with only a few lines, got so much fan mail that he quickly went up the ladder. As for Janet Gaynor, she had been making money for Fox for over a decade and has probably the best role here, but her time at Fox, and in film for that matter, is just about over.I'd highly recommend this if you ever get the time. The ghostliest fact to me - these people don't even realize that their wishes may be temporary because another war is about to change everything in just three years time.

Star-studded cast with three complete story lines make this tiny gem a fast-paced and absorbing flick. Bennett commands all her scenes with her trademarked regal assurance, Young does her gushing little girl routine, with one quick quip about being independent of men at the beginning, almost as if there was a coded assumption that she was a feminist at heart who had to be proved wrong by the overwhelming righteousness of patriarchal adherence to the masculine preferences inherent in the typical happy ending. Gaynor does her variation on Young's innocent routine, only mixing in the eager submissiveness of the thoroughly indoctrinated practitioner of standard femininity. The stories are set in Budapest, harnessed together by one of old Hollywood's most beloved artifices, the "three girls rooming together in poverty searching for husbands" plot. We are instantly thrown into the three romantic story lines, with the astonishing economy of old Hollywood that I fervently wish were still practiced today. Bennett is engaged in a open, sensible affair with Paul Lukas, and is showily worldly and cynical, while using subtle cues to clue us into the real state of her heart. Young has a storybook romance going with a young nobleman, played by the preternaturally handsome Power, who could have used a bit more screen time, or so many of us might wish. Gaynor is in love with a irascible, jealous control freak doctor, Ameche, but is discharged by him when she starts to work for the pompous, self-centered Alan Mowbray, who is a conceited magician and who does a wonderful character turn in the typically delightful Mowbray style, which is to say, as gay as pink ink on scented paper.I expected absolute fidelity to the standard Hollywood tropes and was pleasantly surprised to find the ending quite mixed. Young and Bennett reprise Young's comments about independence after being properly chastened by the absolute freedom enjoyed by the men in their lives, and Lukas is boldly tempted away from Bennett's side by Simon, playing a French schoolgirl who steals every scene she is in with her precocious grasp of the values of sexual audacity. There is a priceless moment, after she gets him to kiss her, a lingering kiss fraught with expectation and lacking in any visible restraint, where she looks at him in delight and barks a little laugh of knowing disdain and triumphant glee. Excellently put together and directed with great timing and sensitive performances, this film greatly exceeded my modest expectations.

Just an addition to other comments; this film while definitely Hollywood has a European feel to it. There is a definite desperate,cynical air to it that would make you think it's director was a continental director transplanted to the US. I checked and Griffith is from Virginia. However, he was educated in Europe-this of course proves nothing but maybe he was influenced by familiarity with European film. Anyway this "feel" I get from the film makes it more interesting to me. But whatever it is worth seeing just for the great cast!

An early example of Darryl Zanuck's favorite formula: three young ladies share an apartment [see THREE BLIND MICE, MOON OVER MIAMI, HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE, THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING]. This time the setting for their various romantic difficulties is Budapest. Squeaky-voiced Janet Gaynor gets top billing as a poor girl who hawks neckties on streetcorners but also feeds rabbits for young doctor Don Ameche and still has time to perform valet duty for self-absorbed magician Alan Mowbray. Over-eager Loretta Young, on the other hand, obsesses over wealthy nobleman Tyrone Power. As a sophisticated gold-digger, Constance Bennett has the best role, allowing her to underplay effectively. Her plot thread involves an affair with wealthy Paul Lukas, complicated by the unexpected arrival of Simone Simon [who is introduced as a nymphet in a sailor suit]. With all these comic/romantic/tragic ingredients [poison is also involved], this stew is not completely digestible. However, despite awkward shifts in tone and rather flat lighting, it remains interesting as a showcase for a variety of film personalities, some on the rise and some not. Ironically, the most striking performance comes from a subsidiary character: Wilfrid Lawson, who implies an entire world of sophistication in his few scenes as an aging playboy.