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Great Film overall

Admirable film.

A Masterpiece!

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

I couldn't believe this film had such a rich look to it in the beginning, mainly for Arthur standing in the rain in her first scene.Then she does the truly bizarre bit and runs to the little shop and orders, "a facial and a shampoo" and comes out gussied up like a typical Hollywood starlet. How about that dress? Yea, that looks inconspicuous on the busy NY street, don't it? Then we get a coffin, she faints, and McCrea ends up exchanging ties with a guy holding a gun on him.It lost me completely with all this, cuz this was all nothing but a joke.After that, I hardly paid attention and am surprised to see the reviews here involved BANK ROBBERY! I caught on to none of this. All in all, it's quite a shame, as the beginning looked purely authentic, but it all turned on 'a facial and a shampoo' for me.

Joel McCrea and Jean Arthur have an "Adventure in Manhattan" in this 1936 film, also starring Thomas Mitchell and Reginald Owen, and directed by Edward Ludwig.McCrea plays a sharp criminal reporter who is convinced that a world-famous thief, believed dead, is actually very much alive and responsible for some big heists that have taken place. He meets Arthur, a young actress, and the two fall in love as McCrea tries to prove his theory.This is a really enjoyable film, with delightful performances by McCrea and Arthur. It's a bit all over the place - part screwball, part mystery. I frankly didn't see much of Nick and Nora Charles in it as others have. But the dialogue is bright, McCrea and Arthur have good chemistry, and some aspects of the mystery are good. McCrea is often thought of as sort of a poor man's Gary Cooper: a handsome, hunky all-American. In westerns there is more of a similarity, with Cooper having more gravitas, but McCrea's lighter touch and more overt personality lent themselves well to comedy. That's where he and Cooper parted company.Enjoyable, and with a better script, it would have been terrific.

Vastly entertaining mystery movie/1930s newspaper comedy about master criminal (Reginald Owen) who finances a World War I play with on-stage explosions to cover up below-ground explosions needed to break in to next door bank vault where the priceless Sunburst diamond he covets is locked up in the vaults. Thoroughly preposterous plot but who cares! Delightful hard-boiled, wise-cracky romantic comedy between ace-reporter/criminologist Joel McCrea and sassy but adorable actress (Jean Arthur). Thomas Mitchell rants and raves as the newspaper editor, and Herman Bing has a delightful cameo as the German owner of the club where newspapermen hang out. Suspend all disbelief and enjoy yourself.

After a big success in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town which really established Jean Arthur as the rival in screwball comedy to Carole Lombard, she got cast in some routine films that sought to take advantage of her new image. Adventure in Manhattan was one of them and while it's plot verges on the silly it could have been a lot better, but for some really bad miscasting.The guy who could have brought off the role of the wise cracking crime reporter was over at Warner Brothers. This part James Cagney could have phoned over to Columbia, but in the hands of all American hero Joel McCrea it really looks forced. Some high profile robberies have taken place and crime reporter McCrea thinks and has written that the culprit of all these has been a master criminal along the lines of Professor Moriarty. Problem is that this guy is believed dead by all, but McCrea.McCrea is right and it's revealed early enough in the film to be Reginald Owen who is now in the guise of a theatrical producer. And Jean Arthur is an aspiring young ingénue in the cast of a World War I play he's producing. One of the problems I had with this plot was that Professor Moriarty and many of the master criminals in real life and fiction usually work alone or with as few accomplices as possible. The scheme that Owen has involves a considerable gang and I really can't swallow that somewhere along the line somebody doesn't slip up. Thomas Mitchell in one of his earliest screen roles is McCrea's editor and he's his usual good self. Arthur makes the best of a routine assignment and it took someone like Preston Sturges to bring out the real comedian in Joel McCrea.