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Touches You

Pretty Good

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

. . . about 25 minutes into STAND-IN. The title of Leslie Howard's next novel "Picturization"--GONE WITH THE WIND--already has been trotted out by another character at this point in STAND-IN. Based upon Flint's on-going United Autor Workers' Sit-Down strike of 1936-37, STAND-IN depicts Mr. Howard's character as a One Per Center defecting to The People, rather than as a Plantation Master fighting to preserve Slavery, as he morphed into for GWTW. Though Mr. Gable is nowhere to be seen in STAND-IN, Leslie's "Duke Mantee" buddy from THE PETRIED FOREST (Humphrey Bogart) shows up here unarmed, at the mercy of Mr. Howard's new-found Ju Jitsu skills. Also in the background is the Pettypacker Family, led by a patriarch who's a dead ringer for Leatherface's grandpa in A TEXA$ CHAINSAW MASSACRE. But most viewers of GWTW will be thrilled to see Joan Blondell throw the Namby Pamby slave-driving Ashley over her shoulder and onto his rump several times in STAND-IN.

This is a satire on big business types who let a perfectly viable business (in this case, a film studio) fail for their own profit, leaving all the "little people" in the lurch. The words "capital" and "labor" even get bandied around! A few years ago modern viewers might have found this boring, but with today's economy, people may find that they can relate to it better than they expected! Besides that, it's an interesting "behind the camera" look at Hollywood, 1930s style.Leslie Howard is great as the sheltered accountant who comes to Hollywood to see what's up with his bank's film studio, Joan Blondell is also great in her usual breezy, funny style as the former child star now working as a stand-in for a famous actress. There's also a youngish Humphrey Bogart as a film producer. I really wonder if Howard and Blondell did those ju-jitsu throws themselves, and if those outdoor scenes really were shot in downtown Los Angeles! Quite funny and definitely recommended!

Leslie Howard is one of that handful of actors whose name alone on the credits will get me to watch anything; but given the variety of other talent involved and the general recommendation I'd heard for the film, I have to admit I was left somewhat disappointed in this one.It's not that "Stand-In" is a bad picture, as such. It's amusing so far as it goes. But the entertainment seems an entirely surface one; I felt that somewhere it was missing the heart that would have made it a much better film, and that has for me provided more enjoyment from films more obviously flawed.A contemporary reviewer commented that Leslie Howard came across, despite valiant efforts, as ill at ease with physical slapstick better suited to a Harold Lloyd, and suggested he would have been more at home with a more verbal form of comedy; and this may be part of the problem. But I think for me the trouble was just a basic inability to engage with any of the characters on any level beyond the most superficial. Atterbury Dodd's significant trait is emptying ashtrays - for Douglas Quintain it is carrying around a small dog. Beyond this sort of character shorthand there is little depth to either of them: the film is a quick and cheerful satire on the studio set-up, but I didn't actually enjoy it as much as, say, "The Falcon in Hollywood". By the time we get to the stage at which the hero returns unexpectedly to find himself being lampooned, I felt the situation really ought to provoke a pang of partisanship rather than a mild titter.The role of Atterbury Dodd, the dry-as-dust bespectacled accountant who discovers sympathy for his fellow men and becomes an unlikely hero, is one that might have been typecast for Leslie Howard, and one that he could probably have sleepwalked through if necessary. However, he plays the part here gamely enough, somewhat hampered in the ultimate showdown by his convincing portrayal of a man who literally can't see straight: contrary to Hollywood convention, Dodd is genuinely dependent on his spectacles and cannot be magically transformed into an action hero by losing them. He delivers his big speech in golden-haired clean-cut Scarlet Pimpernel mode, but does it while effectively as blind as a bat -- a fine piece of acting on Howard's part, but the whole sudden conversion from number-pusher to philanthropist is not an entirely convincing character transformation. Likewise, Quintain's much-mentioned (and plot-necessary) love for the thoroughly obnoxious leading lady is stated, but never really credibly depicted. This is lightweight comedy, carried out more or less by-the-numbers.The other thing that puzzled me was my conviction that I'd seen certain isolated scenes of the film elsewhere, without having any recollection whatsoever of the plot! The scene where the dancing-lesson ends up with feet drawn all over the floor could easily be generic comedy (and in fact I'm now pretty sure I'd seen it in a silent short earlier this year), but that 'jungle woman' footage is very distinctive, and where I could have seen it before is more than I can guess. Perhaps some "100 Greatest Moments" compilation of spoofs and disasters? Joan Blondell makes a cheerful girl-next-door heroine, although I couldn't help being distracted into mentally calculating backwards and working out that her days as a winsome child singer must surely have been before the introduction of talking pictures -- a vaudeville act perhaps? (One side effect of seeing this picture at the National Film Theatre was that the overheard protest "I starred in that role in the silent era!" resulted in an audience murmur of sympathy instead of a laugh at the aging actress' expense...) Overall the film is an unobjectionable comedy. But it's not the overlooked gem of Humphrey Bogart's -- or Leslie Howard's -- career that I had somewhat rashly been given to expect, and it's not especially funny.

Colossal studios is in the financial toilet. The bank that's holding the mortgage sends one of their top men, Leslie Howard, to figure out what to do to save the studio or sell it to C. Henry Gordon a rival movie mogul. Howard may not know the first thing about making movies and his people skills leave something to be desired, but he's now wondering why Gordon is so anxious to acquire this property. Howard supersedes Colossal studio head Humphrey Bogart as head of the company and gets a crash course in film making. Of course he's helped quite a bit by Joan Blondell who he meets accidentally while on the way to the studio. She's an extra and a stand-in and she gives him a few lessons in management and a few other things.This was the second and last pairing of Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart. At Howard's insistence, Bogey was brought to Warner Brothers to repeat his stage role in The Petrified Forest which he and Howard co-starred in on Broadway. Stand-in is not The Petrified Forest, but it's still an amusing comedy and good entertainment.