CommentsXp Best movie ever!

BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Walter Sloane Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

weezeralfalfa A highly contrived secret agent farce, taking place in early WWII. The plot concerns an effort to transmit a message from England to British agents in the US concerning plans for deployment of a squadron of Lockheed Hudson light bombers the RAF has bought. The microfilm message is hidden inside a scorpion medallion which gets transferred back and forth several times between agent Madeleine Carroll (Karen) and Bob Hope(Larry: a vaudeville performer with a penguin(Percy) act. Madeleine ran into Hope while trying to lose a couple of German agents on her tail, who had killed her partner on the ship from England(Why wasn't she sent by plane for such an important mission??) Hope tries to lose this mysterious lady at first, but she finds him wherever he goes. They separately board a train for Chicago to meet an agent there. But, the Germans have beat them there and killed the agent, who leaves a note for a contact in L.A.. Madeleine and Hope have quite a time getting from Chicago to L.A., including stealing a bus and a small plane, and stowaways in a boxcar. Periodically they are running from police or sheriffs, being charged with murder or theft, along with running from the German agents, who are always hot on their heels and even ahead of them(How did the Germans know where they were going next??). At L.A., the Germans have tied up and hidden the British agent, so Madeleine steals their car and makes for the Air Base where the Hudsons are, leaving Hope behind to deal with the Germans. Somehow, he escapes the Germans and gets to the air base a little later. I had no prior knowledge of Madeleine Carrol. She didn't impress me as especially beautiful or charismatic, although she had been popular through the '30s both in the US and her native England. It was 5 years before she did another film, in the meanwhile devoting herself to various functions relating to WWII, being saddened by the death of her sister from a London air raid. I would have preferred Betty Hutton, a new arrival at Paramount, in her place in this film. I don't believe Betty ever costarred with Hope: a lost opportunity for some fantastic comedy. There were many holes in the screenplay(nothing terribly unusual),a few of which I already alluded to, for example the uncanny ability of the Germans to keep up with or anticipate Bob and Madeleine. "My Favorite Brunette", also costarring Hope, had a similar problem, with Peter Lorre popping up wherever the stars went, sometimes ahead of them. On the other hand , there is a fair amount of humor Hope-style.Note :Some factual details about the 2 engine Lockheed Hudson light bomber featured here: As shown in the film, they were made in southern California. Especially before the US entered the war, they were mostly sold to the RAF, for use in coastal patrol, sub chasing, training, transport and reconnaissance. They were not powerful enough to take part in massed bombing raids(limited range and bomb capacity). However, pilots reported they were exceptionally maneuverable for a 2 engine plane. At least early in the war, they were shipped disassembled in crates to England. Thus, the idea that a squad of Hudsons were ready to fly to England and take part in mass bombing raids doesn't jibe with the facts. The range of these planes was too short to fly across the Atlantic, at least until air bases were established in Greenland and Iceland. Hollywood often used Hudsons as proxies for larger bombers, because they were available nearby.

utgard14 Pleasant comedy about a guy (Bob Hope) who has a vaudeville act with a penguin getting mixed up with a British secret agent (Madeleine Carroll). It's not the funniest comedy you ever saw but darned if it isn't one of the most likable. Hope and Carroll have nice chemistry and their banter is great. Lots of snappy lines. The villains are played by George Zucco and Gale Sondergaard. It's pretty much impossible to have a bad movie that features both Zucco and Sondergaard. Nice cameo from Bing Crosby. Very funny bit about halfway through between Edward Gargan and James Burke over who is really Mulrooney (watch and you'll see). It's a good comedy with a fun spy plot and a great cast.

Spondonman I found this a really funny film when I was young, and then again when my daughter was young, but now I find time has taken its usual toll on once-treasured items. Maybe I saw it ten times too often. Sure, it stills makes me laugh at various scenes, Hope has a relentless supply of memorable class-A killer quips, and there's a beautiful glossy Paramount atmosphere, but the laboured contrivance around the microfilm McGuffin and the farcically flat ending now get in the way too much for me.Alluring British secret agent Carroll forcibly enrols mediocre vaudevillian Hope to help her escape from the clutches of an omnipresent Nazi gang who are after her secret warplane plans. Their slapdash flight to California is littered with witty scenes and romantic humour, but some were also flat and even embarrassing too (eg the baby psychologist scene). Favourite bits: Carroll and Hope's deliberate violent fight about her birthday and their subsequent icky sticky reconciliation in the police car; Hope's comical discomfiture at being gradually surrounded by unsmiling Nazis in the train club car; the impeccable Zucco/Sondergaarde partnership; the sight of Percy the Penguin in his monogrammed pyjamas and the gargling Hope chiding the porter for keeping the passengers awake; only study Hope's slapstick expressions upon ordering the cab driver to "follow that cab"; the entire Mulrooney sequence but especially with Toirk the Joirk; many others. The last 20 minutes or so slow it down and spoil it imho, but even so there's still plenty of smart ass one liners from Hope in there.With its flaws I certainly couldn't call it the greatest American comedy ever made like another commenter here has: it's a very pleasant time filler which I've confirmed to myself many times – and not quite even My Favorite Hope movie, but certainly in the top 10.

Dave from Ottawa My Favorite Blonde is not just one of Hope's very best films, but an excellent introduction for new fans. Hope's usual roles were as a vaudevillian or radio comedian who finds himself having to reluctantly participate in some dangerous intrigue which is way over his head, and this movie shows the formula at its cleanest and most smoothly executed. Madeleine Carroll plays a British agent delivering a coded message who has run afoul of Nazis operating in the U.S., and Hope, a ne'er do well road company performer who does an act with a penguin, meets her on a train and bravely (well, sort of bravely) pitches in to keep her safe. The cloak and dagger nonsense on the train is a deft nod to Carroll's star-making turn in The 39 Steps, and this movie has much of that earlier film's energy. Carroll and Hope banter amusingly as they are chased across half of the U.S. The bright dialogue is the film's best feature and Hope's reluctant hero persona, introduced in The Cat and The Canary and Ghost Breakers, is a fully polished comic gem at the the film's center. The look of the film is very 'film noir' with looming shadows and danger on staircases and other now-familiar devices, but it still comes off as fresh entertainment even now. This one movie alone was enough to convince me that Hope is one of the great comic actors in all of movie history and this is an excellent showcase of what he could do. Also a must see for fans of the deliciously sinister Gale Sondergaard, here at something near her best.