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Purely Joyful Movie!

One of my all time favorites.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

A ghostly husband and wife show a stodgy Wall Street banker how to have a good time.The cast is superb. Bennett deserves to be rediscovered for her expert comedic talents and slinky gowns. Ditto Roland Young, minus the slinky gowns. And while this is early Grant, his sophisticated flair still shines through. So I found myself laughing even when I shouldn't. That's because as an ambulance attendant in my younger days, I don't really find anything funny about drunk drivers, even Grant and Bennett. In my view, the cast has certainly worn better than the bibulous material. Then too, the effects that may have wowed them back then seem obvious now. Besides, I never could figure out how ghosts become solid bodies for no apparent reason, as they do here. Plus those background process shots through the windshield aren't up to standard. Okay, that last gripe is a kind of carping. Still, there're the bouts of amusement in frivolous Park Avenue showing uptight Wall Street how to loosen up. And if the results don't wear as well as Bringing Up Baby (1938), for example, it's still entertaining to watch an expert cast go through their paces.

This is a faultlessly wonderful movie. The chemistry between Grant and Bennett is captivating. But even more captivating is Roland Young as the middle-aged man trapped in a boring life and yearning to be free. It's hard not to envy the Kirbys their wonderful, carefree and madcap life, and to sympathize with Topper and his feeling of having lost his life. So, of course, you root for him - and against the wonderful Billie Burke - in his efforts to recover his freedom and LIVE. Yes, it's not unlike another great comedy, Auntie Mame, the story of the magical woman who frees young Patrick Dennis, and those who will listen, from their routine world of Babcocks.If you've never seen this movie, treat yourself. Like the Kaufman and Hart classic "You can't take it with you," you will feel better for having watched it.

Enjoyable fluff about a stuffy banker who loosens up a bit after meeting the freshly-minted ghosts of a couple of fun-loving bank stockholders. Grant and Bennett (in her most notable role) seem to be having fun as the ghostly couple who don't let death cramp their style and Young is perfectly cast in the title role of the banker. Burke, the good witch from "The Wizard of Oz," plays Topper's overbearing wife. The cast also features Palette as a hotel detective and Lake, who would go on to play Dagwood Bumstead in "Blondie" films, as an elevator boy. While the antics of the invisible ghosts lead to some amusing scenes, the film rarely rises above the level of a sitcom.

Thorne Smith is one of those novelists who were really popular for a decade or so and then either prematurely died (like Smith) or faded with their popularity. Today he is recalled for the creation of banker Cosmo Topper, and the ghostly couple of George and Marion Kirby, but they are remembered (probably) more for the movies and television series where they appeared, then for the actual novels. I'm not even sure if the original TOPPER or TOPPER TAKES A TRIP or THE NIGHT LIFE OF THE GODS is still in print.Basically Smith took normal sex and twisted it by adding the supernatural to it - such as the original story to I MARRIED A WITCH. In TOPPER the Kirbys are a fun-loving young couple who are the wealthiest depositors in Topper's bank. George has stock in the bank too, and at the start we see him attend a stockholder's meeting of the Board of Directors. As Topper drones on about banking matters we see George writing down something in front of him. When he gives up at last he explains it is impossible for a person to write his signature backwards and upside down at the same time. The director sitting next to him starts trying to do the same thing, and them remembers why he and the others are still there and throws down his pencil in disgust.That situation is what is developed in TOPPER. Cosmo (Roland Young - possibly in his signature role, as he repeated it twice afterward) is married to Clara (Billie Burke) and they are a staid, childless couple, whose only other "family member" (to stretch a term) is their butler Wilkins (Alan Mowbray). Cosmo's wife organizes his life around an unbreakable timetable, and Cosmo (although following it) is reaching a midlife crisis. George and Marion (Cary Grant and Constance Bennett) try to encourage him to experiment with some occasional fun. But they get killed in a car accident, and Cosmo feels that that is the conclusion of their influence. But after an argument with Clara (she feels the Kirbys got what they deserved), Cosmo buys the car they got wrecked in, and takes it for a drive. He gets into a minor accident, and while recovering discovers that the ghosts of the Kirbys are still around - and they are determined to rescue Cosmo from his middle aged rut. It seems that the Kirbys have never helped anybody, and to enter heaven they have to rescue someone.The comedy of the film follows how the two ghosts get Topper into a series of odd circumstances and adventures, including a visit to night court for causing a public disturbance (Topper punches a cab driver in the nose - the driver is Ward Bond, by the way - and causes a massive fight). As he is reported as being accompanied by a pretty woman (Marion, before she dematerializes), Clara gets upset about the scandal. Subsequently she gets upset that Cosmo is flaunting his infidelities in their home. And then he flees to just get away from it all.It's a weird tightrope, with Topper trying to enjoy himself with Marion (and hide the fact he is accompanied by a woman who is not his wife), and also avoid a jealous George who is threatening to break his neck. The supporting characters are as good as the four leads, with special notice for Mowbray as a staid, proper butler who finally does break character to push Clara into a more proper frame of mind towards her husband. Also note Arthur Lake as a befuddled elevator operator, and later a hotel bellboy, bedeviled by Topper and "those crazy Kirbys", and the marvelous Eugene Palette as a good hotel detective who just cannot get the goods on Topper and his two friends.TOPPER was interesting for another reason. It was one of the films that producer Hal Roach Sr. created in the late 1930s in his attempt to expand from just being the producers of Laurel & Hardy, the Little Rascals, and several other comedians in short subjects. It was a great success for him, leading him to produce two sequels, but it helped create the frictions that led to his eventual split with Laurel & Hardy by 1940. As the only non-TOPPER film that he produced of note was ONE MILLION B.C. it looks like Roach made a tactical mistake here, even if the TOPPER films were pretty good ones.