Home Rule

An uproarious domestic carnival, Home Rule flings open the parlor doors of a marriage that has ossified into ritualized skirmishes; Thelma Hill, a whirlwind of petticoled exasperation, discovers that her once-devoted husband Chester Conklin has metamorphosed into a pompous burgomaster of his own trivial kingdom—complete with a warped constitution that decrees socks may be left on the mantel and toast must be buttered only on the diagonal. Into this cracked porcelain universe barges Jack Singleton, a flim-flamming cousin whose suitcase rattles with improbable gadgets and whose grin promises pandemonium; he proposes a loophole: a mock-divorce that will, paradoxically, remind the warring spouses why they once fused their fates. Frances Conrad drifts through as the neighbor whose fluttering eyelashes could auction the air itself, providing the requisite voltage of jealousy. The screenplay, penned by Conklin himself, pirouettes from custard-pie surrealism to stiletto-sharp repartee, culminating in a nocturnal rooftop chase where marital grievances are hurled like confetti beneath a sodium moon. Every corridor is a comic crucible; every slammed door reopens on a hallucination of what connubial bliss might resemble if only it were scripted by anarchists.