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Truly Dreadful Film

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.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

S J Perelman wrote the play this is based upon along with his wife Laura. While not household names now, they wrote for the Marx Brothers including perhaps the brothers funniest film, Horse Feathers. Here along with Edward G. Robinson, Jane Wyman, and Broderick Crawford along with a great supporting cast, this is a movie that very much reflects Horse Feather's as far as pacing.Robinson is great at comedies, as he did several of them and all of them are quite funny. He seems to have a straight face mobster type of character yet his timing is flawless for comedy. Crawford is more known as a cop in the 1950's Highway Patrol, but as con Jug Martin, he cuts it up pretty well with Robinson. Jane Wyman whose married to 3rd Husband Ronald Reagan at this point, is pleasant in this film. For Wyman this is already her 55th role in a busy career.The plot has to do with ex-cons planning to go from the basement of a luggage store underground to a bank vault and steal plenty of money. What happens instead is by accident and a lot of help they become successful businessmen on the up and up. The important thing here is the laughs with a great script and capable cast.

When I think comedy, the name Edward G. Robinson doesn't come to mind. But he does well in this amusing caper film, expertly piloted by comedy specialist Lloyd Bacon. Ex-cons Maxwell (Robinson) and his two bumbling confederates (Brophy & Crawford) aim to crash a bank vault from their next door luggage shop. Needless to say, they encounter one screwy mishap after another along the way. And just waiting to turn up and horn in is menacing foe Leo (Quinn), who's about as humor-filled as a hungry lion.It really is a stellar cast, with Jack Carson being Jack Carson, Broderick Crawford as a dumb galoot, and Ed Brophy adding character color. Too bad that Jane Wyman has to stand around and just look pretty. Robinson, of course, is the boss giving orders hither and thither whether drilling into the vault or giving away luggage to keep up commercial appearance. Seems there may be a point to the light-hearted proceedings. Namely that the kind of drive it takes to succeed in crime may be the same kind of drive that succeeds in business. Of course, that doesn't mean commercial ends are no different from criminal ones. Instead, it means that both take a certain amount of drive to succeed in a big way. The irony here is that opportunist Maxwell adapts his skills quickly from one to the other.Anyhow, credit director Bacon with blending the elements into a highly amusing package, especially when so much could have gone wrong given the tricky premise. No doubt, I still won't think Robinson when I think comedy. But I will think Robinson when I think outstanding versatile actor.

. . . all the time. One blew up there just last week. So when clueless thugs start jack-hammering in a shop's basement with absolutely no guidance from "Miss Dig" halfway through LARCENY, INC., viewers begin a vigil for the other shoe to drop. First the hapless mugs hit the water line. Next they "strike" oil--fueling the store's furnace. Gas would be the logical next step. But LARCENY, INC. was released during WWII, meaning that special effects budgets were low, and skittish audiences subject to nightly black-outs and air raid drills were NOT in any mood for gratuitous explosions. So instead of ending with a bang, LARCENY, INC. closes with a whimper, as Edward G. Robinson--just clipped in the street by a car--"runs" from the police. The rest of LARCENY, INC. is equally Uninvolving, drifting off on implausible scatter-shot tangents at the drop of a portmanteau. Though Anthony Quinn's escaped con character, "Leo," is mildly menacing, Jane Wyman's role--comparable to WEST SIDE STORY's "Anybody's"--lends little spark to this listless story. Daughter of a dead man, Robinson's ward, and "Jug's" crush, she falls much too easily into the clutches of the first Film-Flamming fellow flirting her way.

Very fast and very funny gangster-comedy from Laura and S.J. Perelman's play "The Night Before Christmas" features Edward G. Robinson as a just-sprung ex-con who finagles his way into becoming the owner and operator of a luggage store in New York City. Why? Because the National Bank is right next door...and its vault is just behind the cellar wall in Robinson's shop. Opening with a hilarious prison baseball sequence, the movie keeps rising higher with each new scene and eccentric new character, like a balloon you don't want to see pop. The dialogue is full of tickling, hard-boiled wit, and Robinson's cuddly cohorts-in-crime (Broderick Crawford and Edward Brophy) are absolutely wonderful. The picture doesn't have a mean-spirited thorn to quibble over, however the third act doesn't live up to the spirited lunacy of the rest--and the final tag jumps too far forward in time. Mostly a delightful enterprise, with a marvelous supporting cast including Jack Carson and Jane Wyman as would-be sweethearts. Woody Allen borrowed the basic premise in 2000 for his hit comedy "Small Time Crooks". *** from ****