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Simply Perfect

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Crazy and fun 1930s picture, the way that all 1930s pics seem to be, with sometimes little control or care for the plot. Joan Blundell and Wallace Ford star as the most two attractive bums you could ever meet. Blondell gets a job being a pretty girl for a ball, but little does she know that she's ACTUALLY going to be a switcheroo in a planned robbery of the benefit money! Oh, there's also a lion that escapes and wanders around terrorizing everybody, a nearly blind policeman who fails to catch the insane past-zookeeper who lets the lion free, and Wallace Ford.. is just there responding to everything. It's all pretty crazy.. and pretty darn entertaining!

Generally, Warner Brothers made terrific films--lots of fun and with some wonderful actors. However, this B-movie just never seemed to gel for me--mostly because the script was so bizarre and uneven. Even with Joan Blondell, Wallace Ford and Guy Kibbee trying their best, it's still a sub-par film.The film is unusual for a Depression-era movie in that it actually acknowledges that their is a depression!! Too often, films throughout the 1930s were about rich society folks--yet most people in the country were barely scraping by. Here, the film finds Ford and Blondell homeless and without jobs. They manage to scrape by here and there but have to sleep in the park because they just haven't got enough money even to eat. Later, their need for a job manages to merge with another plot--this one involving a cop with bad eyesight (Kibbee) and an escaped maniac. Both plots (particularly the Kibbee one) are just weird and tough to connect with. How they later intersect is also odd. Now I like novel ideas--but they need to be realistic or at least enjoyable. However, I just kept waiting and waiting for some payoff but by the end of the film I just came to realize that this was a bit of a bust. Not terrible--but also not particularly good. Considering that Blondell was a very new starring actress, this sort of throwaway role isn't all that surprising. Most actors did a few turkeys like this on their role to stardom.

Central Park is a short not quite an hour B film that starred Joan Blondell and Wallace Ford who meet in the famous park over a pair of purloined hamburgers. They are the leads in a series of interconnected incidents involving a robbery of the famous Central Park Casino, an escaped lion from the zoo, Guy Kibbee as a beloved patrolman who is slowly losing his vision and trying to stick it out until retirement and an escaped mental patient who happens to be the former zoo keeper.Of course the zoo and the Sheep Meadow are there, but today's audiences unless they're read in the history of the times wouldn't know about the Central Park Casino or that there was gambling and a nightclub on the park grounds. And in 1932 when the film came out, the Central Park Casino was the favored hangout of Mayor James J. Walker. An added dimension that theatergoers of the day had that people watching on TCM can't appreciate.The film is structured kind of like Boogie Nights or Crash with the separate elements all coming together at the end. For B film, Warner Brothers put a lot of care into this one.

In New York's Central Park, jobless Joan Blondell (as Dot) flirts with unemployed Wallace Ford (as Rick) as they ogle unaffordable hot dogs. When a wayward baseball strikes the vendor's window, Ms. Blondell swipes two juicy hot dogs, which she shares with Mr. Ford. The two are mutually attracted, and arrange a more proper date. Ford is acquainted with the park cop Guy Kibbee (as Charlie). Mr. Kibbee has one week of work until he is eligible for pensioned retirement. However, Kibbee is no longer a competent policeman - his vision is failing...Blondell is duped, by gangsters, into working undercover in a "Most Beautiful Girl" contest. Ford smells trouble, and gets into danger of his own. Meanwhile, lunatic John Wray (as Smiley) escapes from his insane asylum. A former keeper at the "Central Park Zoo", Mr. Wray causes trouble for everyone by causing the zoo's killer lion ("Nebo") to escape from his cage, and threaten the environs. Henry B. Walthall (as Eby) is a Kibbee confidante. Harold Huber (as Nick) is the gang leader. Director John G. Adolfi and his cast make this creaky early talkie roar with all their might.****** Central Park (12/10/32) John G. Adolfi ~ Joan Blondell, Wallace Ford, Guy Kibbee, Henry B. Walthall