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Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

While "Three Smart Girls" has some very nice moments, the film will probably be received less enthusiastically than it was back in 1936. Back then, the film received three Oscar nominations and Deanna Durbin received a special Oscar for her performance. However, now it just seems awfully formulaic and ordinary...though still worth watching.The film begins with the three young ladies at home with their mother. They learn that their jerk-faced father is remarrying. Apparently, the parents divorced many years earlier and now the daughters want to see if they can break up this marriage and get their parents back together. However, and this is a HUGE problem with the film, the father (Charles Winninger) is a horse's butt. This is because he apparently hasn't seen them at all since the divorce--and why would the girls want to be involved with him? And, how could they ever expect such a self-centered guy to even care what they think? Still, the ladies somehow want to bring Daddy back to the bosom of his loving family.So why do I STILL give this movie a 7? Ray Milland. He was WONDERFUL in the film--and how he gets involved with these goof-ball girls is awfully funny. See the film--you'll see what I mean.

Deanna Durbin really did save Universal from bankruptcy and enabled it to remain a big studio. By the mid 30s most of the big directors that had been at Universal eg Milestone, Browning and Wyler had gone. Only James Whale remained but his prestigious horror films were behind him. Deanna and Judy Garland appeared in a short "Every Sunday" and initially Garland was suggested for the role of Penny in "Three Smart Girls". When Garland was unavailable Universal switched to Durbin. Initially she had been definitely a supporting player but her potential was so vivid that the script was rewritten to make her the star. Directed by Henry Koster the film had a European touch.The film starts with a beautiful panorama of a lake in "Switzerland". The "three smart girls" of the title - three sisters, Joan (Nan Grey), Kay (Barbara Read) and Penny (Deanna Durbin) are sailing with Penny giving her glorious voice to "My Heart is Singing". All is not too well on the home front - their father is planning to remarry a younger woman (Binnie Barnes) so the three girls with the help of their trusty nurse (Lucille Watson) decide to go to New York and reunite him with their mother. Lucille Watson is best remembered for her role as Robert Taylor's stern mother in "Waterloo Bridge" (1941).Donna is a gold-digger who, along with her scatty mother (Alice Brady), is determined to marry Judson Craig (Charles Winninger). For someone with no film experience Deanna is wonderful as Penny, a typical pesky, over enthusiastic kid sister and she is as pretty as a picture. When she sings "Someone to Care for Me" to her father you will just melt - what a glorious voice she had. She also has one of the funniest lines in the film. When her father consoles her with "I'll take you to the zoo tomorrow", she replies "Oh I can see enough monkeys around here"!!!With the help of Bill Evans (John King) they decide to hire a "count" (Mischa Auer)to romance Donna. They arrange to meet at a nightclub but due to a mix-up Lord Michael Stuart (Ray Milland) is mistaken for the count and Donna falls for him (she thinks he owns half of Australia!!!) The plan backfires as he falls for Kay and Donna wants to hasten her marriage to Judson.Penny decides to take matters into her own hands and runs away. She is taken to the local police station where she charms the cops with her rendition of "Il Bacio" (she is trying to convince them she is a young opera singer.) Everything ends happily with their mother (Nella Walker) sailing over to patch things up with their dad and in the meantime Donna makes the acquaintance of the phoney count (Mischa Auer) and sails off to Australia with him.Highly recommended.

This film is so old I never realized how young looking Ray Milland looked in 1936, I remember him playing in a great film, "Lost Weekend". Ray plays the role of Michael Stuart, who is a very rich banker. There are three girls in this picture who are not very happy about their father and mother separating and they find out their father is going to get married to a young blonde who is a gold digger only looking for a rich sugar daddy. They hire a man to pose as a very rich Count, his name is Count Ariszted, (Misha Auer) who is drunk all the time and is penniless and gives plenty of comic laughs throughout the picture. Deanna Durbin, (Penny Craig) surprised everyone when she was booked in a police station and told the chief of police that she was an opera star and then Penny starts singing with the most fantastic soprano voice I have every heard, the entire police department and convicts started applauding, which was a very entertaining and enjoyable scene from this film. This is Deanna Durbin's first film debut and she became an instant success over night and went on to become a great movie star with Universal Studios after leaving MGM.

Henry Koster's film is a seamless classical hollywood goal-driven narrative with elements of a musical, romantic comedy and layers of mistaken identity, all accelerated to a final climax and resolution by the interjection of a temporal goal deadline within the film. Deanna Durbin serves as the focal character of the three sisters, all working together to attain one common goal – to break up their estranged father's engagement and to reunite him with their mother. While the sisters work as a united front to achieve their goal, each is developed, in part, using the playful bicker that invariably accompanies the sisters' interactions.This film is also a romantic comedy filmed in the `sophisticated world of the social aristocracy'(1). True to the roots of the big studio Romantic comedies of the 1930's and 40's, this film features lavish settings of wealth and prestige providing an escape, however brief, for movie goers from the depression. The film opens with a display of wealth by depicting the comfortable lifestyle that the girls enjoy with their mother in Europe. During this opening scene in which the sisters are outside on their sailboa t with Durbin singing, merrily sailing down a stream near their home. The narrative goal is set soon after this opening sequence when the sisters are called in for lunch by a housekeeper. Once inside, they discover that their father is to marry a famous glamor girl in the US. Fueled by the desire to quell their mother's sorrow, the girls set off to America to win over their father by turning him away from his pending marriage and stealthily persuading him to return to their mother. Upon their arrival the sisters discover the difficulty of their goal; the fiancee and her mother are aware of the girl's meddling ways and are determined to frustrate the girls attempts at intervention.The bulk of the film is filled with trials and tribulations that both frustrate the girl's goals as well as push them closer to completing their objectives in unplanned ways. The dichotomy of wealth and worth is represented in many ways in this film. Class, social status and money play a pivotal role in the nuances of the plot as the sisters try to get the fiancee to `latch on' to another man who has a title and more wealth. The gold digging nature of the fiancee is pivotal in the many efforts used by the sisters to break the engagement. It is obvious that the engagement is not based on love, which further leads the viewer to root for the girls successful intervention. The fiancee's determination to marry into wealth eventually serves as the key to the girl's success, however unexpectedly, and simultaneously thwarts her own opportunities at such a marriage.The sisters form a powerful team within which each has a very different personality. Each tactic they employ to break up the engagement begins to be thwarted by the romantic entanglements of the 2 older sisters with two of the men they are using to manipulate the fiancee, effectively twisting the plot in on itself many time during the film and providing ample barbing dialogue between the 2 courting couples. (Durbin's character is only 14 years old, so the romantic comedy portions of the film take place in the other characters relations with each other.)Throughout the film, Durbin is asserted as the main character through long, close-up voice solos that solidify her role as the central character. These musical interludes serve also as plot devices to win over adoration and support from her listeners within the film (as well as the audience), bringing her closer to her goals. In a classic use of editing to tell a story, the emotional effect of her voice on other characters is clearly implied using an editing style that switches between an extreme close-up of the singing Durbin and an equally extreme close-up of the expressions of her captivated listeners(1). These interludes also showcase the sound quality of the film The lack of background noise and the clarity and range of her singing voice are used to draw out emotion in the viewer as they get to know more intimately this young character they are rooting for so firmly. The sense of temporal urgency takes hold of the film when the wedding date is suddenly rescheduled for the following day by the sly fiancee and her mother in order to outwit the girls' schemes. This plot twist serves to shift the narrative from goal based to urgently time focused(1). The girls are forced to call on all of the contacts they've made (with a big dose of luck) to succeed in the end. With this shift to a frantic countdown in plot action, the film becomes very compelling, with the outcome uncertain until the very end. The narrative reaches resolution when, in the final scene, the mother arrives from overseas and is greeted by her triumphant daughters and her ex-husband. Although the success of this meeting is far from assured, the development of the daughter's characters as intelligent, persuasive, and strong willed almost convinces the audience of a successful reunion. (1) "American Cinema/American Culture" John Belton, 1994.