Suzy: Jean Harlow and Cary Grant are trapped in this weird, messy melodrama

Is it worth your time?

Honestly, only if you are a completionist for 1930s Hollywood stars. If you want a tight, logical plot, look elsewhere. People who love watching talented actors try to salvage a script that was clearly written by a committee of six different writers will probably have a decent time. Everyone else might get bored during the long, draggy middle section.

The whole thing feels like three different movies glued together with cheap tape. You’ve got this noir-ish start where Jean Harlow is basically running for her life after her husband gets offed, and then suddenly it pivots into a breezy romance with Cary Grant in Paris. It’s jarring.

Speaking of Grant, he plays a WWI pilot with this reckless, grinning energy that is usually great, but here he feels slightly out of place. He’s charming, sure, but the movie keeps pushing him into these melodramatic corners that he can't quite act his way out of. He’s just too smooth for the mess happening around him.

Harlow is the real glue, even when the scenes make zero sense. She has this way of looking exhausted that feels very real, especially when the dialogue gets particularly clunky. She deserved a better script than this.

Oddly specific observations:

• There is a scene in a nightclub that goes on for about three minutes too long. You can literally watch the background actors start to run out of things to pretend to do.
• The transition from London to Paris happens so quickly I almost missed it. One minute she’s crying in an alley, the next she’s waltzing in France.
• I’m still not sure what the deal with the German spy plot was. It’s like the writers forgot about it for 40 minutes and then remembered they needed to wrap it up in the final act.

If you enjoy movies that feel slightly broken, like Miss Brewster's Millions, you might appreciate the weird pacing here. It isn't a masterpiece by any stretch, but it's not totally unwatchable either. Just don't ask too many questions about the plot holes, because there are enough of them to sink a small ship. 🚢

The cinematography is fine, I guess. It’s very much that standard MGM studio look. Everything is bright and polished, which makes the darker parts of the story feel even more ridiculous. I kept waiting for someone to actually show some real emotion, but the movie seems terrified of being too quiet.

It’s one of those flicks that feels like it was made to keep the studio contract players busy. It’s not great, but it has that weird, uneven charm of a movie that doesn't quite know what it wants to be. 🤷‍♂️