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The Worst Film Ever

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

First of all, this is a filmed play with bewildering time skips. It's the weather that clues us in to "six months later" or "that following spring" as characters don fur coats or dress in short sleeves. I was confused in the beginning and at the end of movie, figured the whole thing occupies about two years.My, it's well acted. After Harding feels clucky when idling her transatlantic voyage away by playing companion to a two year old of a fellow voyager, she decides to take up her live in lover's, Howard's, proposal of marriage. He's proposed numerous times, and she supposes he'll be thrilled that she agrees at last to make it legal. Her giddy expectation that he'll be happy with a/her baby needs and b/her revelation that she's artistically ready to paint made me smile. Surprise! He's found Loy, a sultry young lady ready, after one month, to marry him. He still wants Harding as Dear Friend, waiting in the shadows until he's ready to dribble out some time to her, hooboy, now that's never happened in the history of the world. :SNow comes the tangling of lives and families that make up the Barry play blueprint of Domineering Parent and Befuddled Child. The child, Howard, has integrity up the wazoo but not much ready cash. As a sidenote, all these characters have varying degrees of wealth, living as "Bohemian" in spacious apartments with glorious views or living in well-appointed homes in the country. I guess if you live in a mansion, like Parent, you want your child to do likewise.Eight stars for acting from the cast: Gargan as an unlikely butler, Loy as schemer (to me, she was written as completely unsympathetic), Harding as full of herself while blind to Howard's eventual tiring of her resistance to marriage, and most of all Howard for his end scene with Loy in which the lights come on about which woman acts Nicest and Kindest to him. He portrays superbly the realization that now is the time to act and not waffle with words.

Four years after this film was made, Myrna Loy - then Queen to Clark Gable's King of Hollywood - played his wife in a glossy 'A' list trifle suggestively called 'Wife vs. Secretary' (1936). The wife of the title is a whiny mercenary shrew whose charm resides solely in the enormous charisma of the actress playing her; while the racy title is belied by making the newly 'brownette' Harlow brisk, efficient and wholly honorable in her intentions toward husband Clark Gable. When I saw it I thought it would have been a much more interesting film if it had been made pre-Code with Loy playing the secretary and Harlow at her sluttiest and most peroxided as the wife (as in 'Dinner at Eight'). The same thought occurred to me watching 'The Animal Kingdom'. Being pre-Code, it's able to be frank about the role that sex plays in the various characters' interrelations without being too flippant about it either, since it's really about relationships rather than sex (rather as Douglas Sirk's glossy melodramas of the fifties later tended to be) and views a husband leaving his lawful wedded for his on again-off again mistress with active approval.Loy's name isn't even included on the title card but she actually gets far more screen time than Ann Harding as the mistress and is obviously offering husband Leslie Howard (when she feels he's earned it) passion of an order he plainly hasn't known with Harding for some time. As in real life the characters have made exasperating life decisions (Loy herself in reality notoriously made four wholly unsuitable choices of husband). Loy is here charming but mercenary and manipulative, while Harding seems very prim for a supposedly "promiscuous" (and Yes, that's the word that Loy - no less - uses to describe her) bohemian who has allowed her physical relationship with Howard to wither on the vine, yet is still affronted that Howard should have the temerity to seek more... stimulating companionship elsewhere. (The fact that he nonchalantly leaves her apartment while she just carries on talking in the next room speaks volumes about the place their relationship has reached).Within minutes of primly branding Harding "a promiscuous little...!" Loy reveals herself to be not above finally stopping teasing poor Neil Hamilton and giving him a little of the "excitement" he's plainly been gagging for since the film began if he'll perform a professional service on her behalf. Having until now shown himself to be weak and easily manipulated, Howard at the film's conclusion draws upon hitherto unsuspected reserves of iron self-control - that would certainly have been well beyond me - to turn his back on a bedroom door on the other side of which the delectable Loy is undressed and waiting for him.All the acting is good - particularly William Gargan recreating his stage role - and Loy was always effusive in her praise for the guidance she received from the film's largely forgotten director Edward H. Griffith. I was also fascinated by the diorama of the Brooklyn Bridge visible through the window of the New York apartment occupied by the supposedly penniless Harding.

1st watched 12/7/2004 - 7 out of 10(Dir- Edward H. Griffith): Surprisingly honest and frank drama about a man who can't decide between two women in his life. One, ties him down to a commitment and is a solid person and the other doesn't ask for a commitment and is a great friend but doesn't have the stability of the first. I never did figure out why the movie was called "Animal Kingdom", but I believe it has to do with how we as humans tend to become survivalists like those in the animal kingdom do when things aren't going well. This is one of the most complex character studies that I've seen in awhile especially from a movie made so long ago. The acting is kind of up-and-down but the story is consistently intriguing as we try to figure out what Tom(the book publisher) is going to do in his life from one moment to the next. Every character in this story is interesting in one way or another and the movie works hard to follow these characters and not just make a happy-go-lucky movie experience. There is a uniqueness in this film's open attitude towards love and friendship and how to piece them together that I have not seen often.

very good movie that the censors couldn't destroy. amazing for it's blatantly adult themes in 1932. the story hasn't aged one bit. lesile howard is brilliant in his role. i saw this on tv one night and searched for half a year to figure out what it was called. fantastic.