Inclubabu Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Roman Sampson One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Delight Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

JohnHowardReid I was not over-impressed with this movie when I first saw it on TV back in the late 1960's. I wrote that it began most promisingly with Roland Young (of all people!), brilliantly cast as a smooth killer, but then petered out when Hope and Fleming got going, although I admitted that Hope made a great introduction when he ran into Jack Benny. My main problem was that the movie did not turn out to be the black comedy signaled by the opening scenes, but spent too much time with two secondary plots, mostly involving the boy scouts and intermittently, Rhonda Fleming. Last night, looking at the reasonably duped Columbia DVD (which seems to have been struck from a 16mm TV print, rather than the original negative), I enjoyed the movie much more than I anticipated. I thought Hope, Young and Fleming were all in fine form. Admittedly, the movie was somewhat top-heavy with scouts, but they were at least reasonably amusing. Hall's best film, just about everyone would agree (including me) was "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" (1941) for which he was nominated for Best Director. The Great Lover is no Mr. Jordan – he doesn't even come close – but it's Roland Young who steals the show!

blanche-2 I admit to loving Bob Hope in the '40s. He was cute, he had great delivery, and I loved that naive persona. In The Great Lover, he's a scout leader who falls for Rhonda Fleming on board ship, all the while he's being eyed by Roland Young as his next mark. Young plays a card shark who lets his mark win, then suggests one last cut of the cards for a winner take all. And of course he wins. When he doesn't, he still wins because he murders his victims and steals their money. The first victim we're shown is George "Superman" Reeves.Fleming and her father are impoverished royalty en route to sell a valuable necklace. Jim Backus, playing a detective after Young, is also on board.Some funny bits, with Fleming looking beautiful and Hope in great form. The best is when he has a $100 bill and a man asks to see it and then nearly pockets it - Jack Benny. Hope walks away from him, stops, and then says to himself, "No -- he'd never be in first class."

Spondonman To me "The Great Lover" was the last great Hope film: he had some good lines, the plot was OK and most importantly Golden Age high production values were much in evidence. The nitrate gleams and is an essential component in the enjoyment of it, Hope and Fleming and the "ship" itself would not have looked as romantic on safety stock film. And the rot that set in with the advent of safety film in the early 1950's had already begun in TGL - just listen to those 2 inept songs, they wouldn't have got as far as being filmed even 5 years previously. The nadir was reached a few years later in "My favourite spy", with a seemingly endless Hope song as excruciating as anything Norman Wisdom could have performed, and utterly ruined an average film for me.I always counted Roland Young as a villain because I saw this first as a kid, whereas he was a pretty versatile actor and played plenty of goodies in his time too. He's a ruthless card sharper in this however, Roland Culver is a cold steely and "broke" aristocrat who Young wants to fleece, Fleming is his high class daughter the innocent Hope falls for. He in turn is leader of 7 little Boy Forresters with Grumpy as 2nd in command.Favourite bits: The morning exercises; Hope petulantly parping smoke through one of the boys bugles; getting distracted by Fleming over champagne as only Hope ever could. The bad bits: a/m songs to avoid. I leave the rest to you to find out!

rgshanks I've always found it difficult to write anything lengthy or analytical about straight comedies. This is not because I don't enjoy them - nothing could be further from the truth, especially in the case of any offering which includes the talents of the great Bob Hope, with or without Crosby. The reason, I believe, lies in the fact that such pictures generally work only by reference to the viewer's direct involvement in them - rather like the experience of belly-laughing continuously for 45 minutes at the comedian's turn at a sportsmen's evening, but without being ever able to remember one gag afterwards. So often, the plot is all too familiar and holds no major surprises. The performances of the stars are generally what you would expect from them, and differ purely in the level of quality from picture to picture, and, for screen comics, the writing is invariably geared to their own particular talents.All this is true of "The Great Lover". Bob Hope is close to his very best as a scout leader returning by boat to America from Europe with his troop and drawn as Roland Young's stooge into murder, intrigue and, of course, romance. As in so many of his pictures of the forties and fifties, he plays a reluctant hero, a role which enables him to display the whole range of his trademark features - the mock cowardice, the way he controls his overheating in the romantic scenes, the witty asides and the cheeky but innocent double entendres.So what makes this picture different or special? In order to answer that, I watched the movie again before writing this review, but I still couldn't come up with a reason. Sure enough, the support playing is more than adequate, the plot simple but still interesting, and Hope is - well - Hope. He just does those things which you associate with him, but somehow the gags and his delivery always seem fresh and unforced and, despite the similarity in content, he always makes the material appear original. I can only therefore come to the conclusion that I like the film because it is a superior piece of Bob Hope work - and I like Bob Hope's work. That is the best recommendation I can give it.