Men Are Such Fools (1938)

"Men Are Such Fools" is a Busby Berkeley comedy that made me so angry I almost drove knitting needles into my eyes just to end the pain. I am a HUGE fan of old movies, I've seen more films from the 30's than most people have seen in their entire lives, and I can safely say this is an absolute disaster. Where do I start?First, every actor in the movie shouts every line as fast as possible. No, they BARK every line at one another with their Energy levels set to 10 and not an ounce of thought or meaning behind a single delivery. The actors perform so quickly, so intensely, that no scene lasts longer than 45 seconds and the entire movie is over in 69 minutes. Was there cocaine being served on set?Secondly the absurd plot involves the brutish Wayne Morris trying to convince the adorable Priscilla Lane to marry him by physically abusing and threatening her. He bellows at her endlessly, parking their car in front of an oncoming train and holding her underwater until she almost drowns. According to the up-tempo soundtrack and hyper-speed direction this is all supposed to be hilarious! Personally I don't find spousal abuse to be a toe-tapping, gut-busting chuckle-fest, but that's just me.The story makes no logical sense, as our buxom and bangable Priscilla adjusts to married life until she one day- for reasons still unclear to me- walks out on her husband just so they can be reunited in the third act. Yuck! Avoid this terrible mess... the soundtrack alone will drive up your blood pressure and give you a headache. All involved have done much better... so will you.GRADE: F

The opening credits of this movie really had me fooled. So many names that led me to expect delightful entertainment. OK, Wayne Morris is obnoxious with his immature, boisterous, steamroll-over-everyone-with-no-regard-for-their-feelings, routine. But this movie's also got: Priscilla Lane, who's always charming. Penny Singleton, very funny but sadly underused apart from the Blondie series. Hugh Herbert, that giggly goofball. Oh yeah, Humphrey Bogart's in it too. Plus, the script is based on a story by Faith Baldwin, and I've enjoyed other movies based on her work.So I was all set to enjoy this one, until I realized early on that it was gonna be one of those movies where the Ambitious Career Gal is taught to stop fighting her True Womanly Nature, which of course means she lets an aggressive doofus wear her down 'til she agrees to marry him, then sublimates and channels her ambitions through him, to help him get off his lazy butt and make something of himself. 'Cause women should stand by (and behind) their man and use their intelligence and talents to help *him* succeed. Be content in your supportive role and never seek glory or take credit. Also, be a mother to your infantile husband. Sounds fun, right? Nice moments of truth where she expresses her boredom with suburbia, the cozy/stifling home, and simple-minded neighbours inane converstions she must put up with. She's wasted there. Her brains and vitality require big-city opportunities and more stimulating company. After he squanders an opportunity she's arranged for him, she leaves him, supposedly to make him take *his* career more seriously and win her back. What then? He'll have more drive, and make her "proud", but she'll still be bored hanging around the house waiting for him to return from work. (And can't even help him openly because his ego must be preserved!) Wouldn't envy and frustration set in? Living vicariously through somebody else is never a good idea. I did like that she wasn't portrayed as a Greedy Wench, pursuing wealth. They were comfortable. Which was part of the problem because she didn't want to be comfortable or complacent. She was bursting with ideas, ambitious to DO something, to create, invent, give life purpose and meaning. And then - inexplicable, implausible "love".Probably the most disturbing thing about Men Are Such Fools, is the way Wayne Morris "woos" Priscilla Lane. Basically he's abusive but we're supposed to find his persistence cute. Pursuing the poor woman no matter how often she says no (girls never really mean "no", they just wanna be chased!) and acting like a petulant child whenever she pays attention to something other than him. But my favorite example of his touching devotion? Maybe the part where he risks her life driving like a maniac and ignores her pleas to slow down. She'll have to agree to marry him first! Tee-hee! Followed by the scare-tactic of stopping the car on the train tracks, just as a train's coming. But don't worry, he knows the train will stop before it hits them. (He didn't know another would come along from the opposite direction and almost kill them for really-real, but it's still funny right?) If the silly stubborn female would just know what's good for her and do as he says, he wouldn't have to go to these lengths! He finally wears her down in this hilarious, heartwarming scene: They're at a pool party and he dunks her *repeatedly* underwater until she agrees to marry him. Any possible humour you might find in this situation is undermined by the fact that he's yanking her roughly by the HAIR and barely giving her time to breathe between dunks. While the other partygoers stand around laughing. Nobody seems to think this might be a tad dangerous or, um, PSYCHOTIC. It's truly disturbing to witness. Trust me, the level of brutality in this scene goes WAY beyond "playful" pool hijinks.After literally making it impossible for her to breathe, he takes her breath away some more, by forcing a kiss. Naturally, she's starry-eyed and ready to set a wedding date! So we get a nice juxtaposition of sex & violence with that wonderful message that women are slaves to their hormones AND enjoy being roughed up - This is the best way to make a woman obey, er, I mean, show a woman you love her. Yes, women stay with abusive men and believe their possessiveness/controlling behaviour/violence = love. Gotta blame movies like this one, for helping to brainwash both men and women into thinking these kinds of relationships are, not only normal, but *ideal*. I just love being confronted with disturbing, depressing issues in romantic comedies!It's bizarre how this couple alternates between excessive "comic" violence/forced almost manic "joy", and other moments where they glare at each other with what seems to be intense hatred/resentment. I wonder if the author or actors were trying to sneak in subversive hints that this is indeed a scary, unhealthy relationship...under the surface veneer of obeying the Hays Code and enforcing gender role "norms" and the illusion of romantic comedy. I'd like to think so! I only recommend this movie to fans of the cast/crew, or students of film history. My goal is to watch every single (existing) movie from the silent era to 1959. Everyone needs an ambition in life, right?

Priscilla Lane begins the film as a secretary but because of her persistence and great ideas, she quickly moves up in the company and is a very well paid executive--something practically unheard of in 1938. However, when she marries Wayne Morris, their marriage is a very bumpy ride.This is a film where most of the actors simply needed a better written script. Now the overall idea of a working woman who has trouble balancing her high-paying job with marriage is very good, the execution looks like it needed an editing--with some dopey performances and logical errors that should have been cleaned up before filming began.One of the biggest problems I noticed was Wayne Morris' character. He wants to capture lovely Priscilla Lane's heart so he goes about it by being totally annoying and harassing the poor lady. Warner Brothers thought this was cute and romantic--to me it felt more like he was a stalker! Now it Lane had played a total ditz, perhaps this might have made some sense--but she was supposed to be a brilliant executive. He just seemed like a boorish jerk--yet she fell for him. So already I found myself hating one of the main characters from the start and having little respect for the other--not a good thing to say the least! In fact, throughout the film BOTH characters are really hard to predict or understand because there is no consistency with either of them. Morris is initially an obnoxious boob, then he is a rather sexist but loving husband with no great ambitions and then he becomes a HUGE high-powered executive. The dumbest part of this was his falling for an ambitious and talented Lane and then insisting, after they are married, that she drop everything to be his stay at home wife. If this is what he wanted, of the millions of women to choose from in America, he probably picked the very worst one!! Lane is a high-powered exec but falls hard to Morris' crude and obnoxious advances. When they marry, she seems pretty happy but then dumps her hubby over practically nothing--as if she were doing this purely as a plot device. It was as if her character couldn't decide if she wanted to be a corporate climber or June Cleaver! Oddly, in this film it seemed that you couldn't be a little of each.As for the supporting cast, most come off pretty well except for Hugh Herbert and Humphrey Bogart. Herbert is a "one trick pony"--a guy whose sole talent in films is giggling and fidgeting with his hands. One-dimensional, of course, but also seeming so stupid that you wonder how he could be such an important and rich man. As for Bogie, unfortunately, this film was made during his "limbo days" at Warner--when he was under contract but they had no idea what to do with him. Here, he seems rather bland and bears no similarity to the rugged character he would be in the 1940s.Overall, the film is mildly interesting in spots. The folks at the studio tried, in their own way, to create a film about women's liberation and equality--though by today's standards it seems incredibly sexist and silly. Also because neither of the leads seemed consistent or believable, the film is more of a curiosity than a good film.

Men Are Such Fools is one of a handful of B pictures that Busby Berkeley directed between his musical extravaganzas. I guess Jack Warner was operating on the theory that if Berkeley was on salary, he'd earn his money one way or another.It's a B picture comedy vaguely reminiscent of the Rock Hudson-Doris Day films a generation later. The leads are Wayne Morris and Priscilla Lane. He's a former star football player, she's a working girl in the advertising game. Priscilla was cute and homespun and was great in stuff like Four Daughters. Here she's all right, nothing more, ditto Morris.THIRD billed in this film is Humphrey Bogart and ironically until he started getting gangster parts, these were the kind of roles he played on Broadway, sophisticated comedies. Bogey shouldn't have tried going back to his roots. His is the kind of role a generation later would have been played by Gig Young or Tony Randall.Nothing spectacular here, it didn't harm the careers of Bogart or Berkeley, but it didn't help either.