In Person (1935)

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Dreadfully Boring

Admirable film.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Ginger Rogers stars in this screwball comedy from RKO about a Hollywood actress, who after a recent nervous breakdown, tries to get away from it all at a wilderness retreat. She attempts to recover with the help of suave and charming George Brent (on loan from Warners).Some of the humorous ideas in the script come across very well. Take, for instance, one scene where the heroine has become rather annoyed with the guy's less-than-successful attempts to romance her. She throws her hands up and looks at him contemptuously. Out of frustration, he asks what she wants him to do, and she tells him to go climb a tree. He then asks what tree in particular, and she says THAT tree, pointing to one off-camera. In the very next shot, he is actually up in a tree when she calls him in for dinner!However, it is always a bit surreal to watch an actress play an actress. Perhaps it does require more than the usual suspension of disbelief to accept that her neurosis would be so easily solved by forging a relationship with a rugged outdoors man. It probably helps that the role was cast with George Brent, instead of Fred Astaire, the studio's original choice. Indeed, having Astaire play a backwoods brute with curative powers may have been even more a stretch.Regarding Mr. Brent, specifically, he is just like he appears in countless other movies. In this one, he projects both awkwardness and sexiness. His performance seems to rely on a limited but likable bag of tricks that he has used to great effect in many pictures. As for Ms. Rogers, there's a timeless quality about the way she projects both insanity and peace.

I actually felt awkward watching this film because I imagined GR felt the same while making it. The plot is thin (a starlet just recovering from having a nervous breakdown from crowds assaulting her because of her fame falls in love while in retreat from the world). Plot holes galore, lousy acting, strange unresolved plot twists. And a dance sequence that must have given GR nightmares for years to come because it was so poorly staged and executed. Full of bad choices all the way around, from the writer to the director to GR agreeing to star in this bomb. Don't add watching this to the list.

Ginger Rogers plays a popular movie actress (so famous, in fact, that her face is on the cover of every single magazine at the newsstand) who seeks solace and anonymity with a businessman in the mountains while disguised as a wallflower. Rogers, who is convincing incognito on and off for the first twenty minutes, doesn't have much to work with here, although she does get to do a cute tap dance/cooking sequence. Otherwise, this star-vehicle is mighty thin, and co-stars George Brent and Grant Mitchell are both lackluster. Not a bad beginning, but by the midway point it has lost all inspiration. ** from ****

The funniest thing about this movie is Ginger Rogers' disguise: buck teeth and glasses, reminding me of Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor (1963). She's a famous actress who got a bad case of agoraphobia when she was mobbed by adoring fans. To get away, she practically invites herself to go with George Brent to a mountain cabin retreat after she overhears that he was going there. Once there the comedy is predictable and routine. You do get to hear Rogers sing three songs and do a neat tap dance, all very enjoyable, but not enough to make up for the flat script.