Whee.

Nice.

Very thrifty.

Hey, that’s… that’s… William Demarest! I love him.

And there’s Lucille.

Ooh

I’ve been really impressed by these early Bob Hope movies, and this one has a lot of good gags, too. However, it’s feeling a bit staid? If this had been ten years earlier, there would have been twice the number of jokes and four times the number of lines.

Director Sidney Lanfield didn’t do many movies after this, but moved onto TV.

The concept of the movie isn’t quite clear, either — at first it seemed like the Bob Hope character was a destitute bookie, but then it turns out that he’s just a very… frugal… bookie. (Possibly.) And then it pivots from being a movie about racketeering into being a very uncomfortable Kid-N-Hope kind of thing?

Yeah, exactly — that’s what this movie feels like: A short story that has been through the wringer. So many writers involved.

Ohhh!

Sorrowful Jones was a remake of a 1934 Shirley Temple film, Little Miss Marker.

I thought this seemed familiar! I’ve seen that one! The new kid is plenty cute, but she’s no Shirley Temple.

This movie, unfortunately, just goes Full Schmaltz for the second half of the movie, and it’s really tedious. So while it looks good and stuff, it’s not worth watching, really.

Sorrowful Jones. Sidney Lanfield. 1949. ⚁

Could this be the best movie ever!?!

Oh, this is a romcom! I wondered why I had this, but I read an article or something about romcoms and why the genre had gone out of fashion, but that this was supposed to be a good new one. I mean, they still make them, but they used to be some of the biggest box office draws since basically the beginning of movies, but that’s not really the case now.

Unfortunately, while this movie is cute and stuff, and has some good running gags, it could have been funnier, and the rom bit of the romcom could have been rommier.

It’s fine! There’s a lot here to like! It’s very likeable. And I can’t really claim that it should have been cut down significantly — all the scenes were fine. But…

Somebody I Used To Know. Dave Franco. 2023. ⚂

Huh — I’m not sure I’ve seen that logo this early before? I mean, 1927…

Nice! Sounds very convenient.

Oh!!! It’s Gary Cooper! Very young and looking totally deranged.

He’d been doing stuff (uncredited) for a couple of years before this, but it looks like this was one of his first real jobs. And he’s really going for it here — he’s totally acting for the cheap seats.

But she’s the reason I got this bluray — I’ve seen virtually no Clara Bow films, and I thought it was time I fixed that.

I should have a mirror like that! Looks very practical.

I know it was just how they did things back then to make everybody pop more on screen, but the heavy lipstick and mascara on Cooper makes him look insane.

I’ve gotta get one of those armpit showers!

Yay work!

I quite like the restoration on this. It’s from Flicker Alley, a company I can’t remember buying anything from before. It’s not over restored — it’s got some scratches and retains quite a lot of grain, but the contrast looks natural instead of being too stark or too bland, which sometimes happens. But it’s been stabilised so that it doesn’t jump around, and just generally looks good. The only thing that’s slightly disturbing is that sometimes when they show a title, they show a still of the title instead of the footage, so everything grows STILL. But that’s nit-picking — it looks as good as a movie from 1927 can look.

Unfortunately, Clara Bow isn’t really in this movie a lot. She’s the villain, sort of, getting in the way of Gary Cooper’s and Esther Ralston’s happiness.

Bah humbug!

This movie is fine. It’s well made and has plot that isn’t bad — the text is very explicit about Divorce Being Bad, but the plot seems to say the opposite — but it’s not more than that. The best things about the movie are really the incredible 20s fashions and the set designs.

Children of Divorce. Frank Lloyd, Josef von Sternberg. 1927. ⚃