Four's a Crowd (1938)

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Absolutely Brilliant!

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This movie was very much a disappointment to me.I very much like Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, and Rosalind Russell. And Michael Curtiz has directed some of my favorite movies, such as Robin Hood and The Sea Hawk. But despite all that talent, this movie just doesn't work for me.I place the blame on the script, which is really weak. Flynn's character is often incomprehensible - whom does he love, and why? - and not particularly likable, though Flynn exerts all of his very considerable charm. As a result, we're not really rooting for him, or even sure which way he wants to go. Russell is great - shades of her performance as a newspaper woman in His Girl Friday - but she doesn't get the great lines that movie provided her. Things move along briskly, but we don't always care.This movie leaves no lasting impression, which is a shame, because it shows that Flynn could have made some great comedies, had he but been given the right script.

Errol Flynn showed he was very capable of making light comedies and "Four's a Crowd" is his best one by quite some way. Once again, Michael Curtiz is the director and Olivia De Havilland is Flynn's leading lady. The script is a bit corny in all honesty but at least "Four's a Crowd" isn't depressing or melancholic. It takes a bit of getting used to, seeing Errol Flynn in a contemporary setting. An undemanding film but quite amusing.

OK! This is not the great hidden screwball masterpiece. The screwy cleverness is pretty obvious, but it's still funny. The story is adequate enough to keep the laughs coming with the right cast. I won't bother too much with the details because you'll get the idea pretty quickly. This is the right cast however and they keep the laughs coming.For me the highlights are the scenes with Errol Flynn and Rosalind Russell. Russell has always been great as a comedienne and she delivers here as well, but Flynn is a revelation. Like Frank Morgan and Walter Pidgeon before him, he is the guy who not only can, but will, sell refrigerators to the Eskimos. When he turns the charm on Russell it's like being with that cousin who got you into network marketing.The final act gets the ensemble (de Havilland,Flynn, Knowles and Russell) colliding together like bumper cars with Justice of the Peace, Hugh Herbert misdirecting traffic. He may have delivered the ultimate screwball line ever with "Children, please don't fight! There'll be time for that after you're married." Realistically, it's obvious why the suits would not let Flynn take this direction, he was the king of swashbucklers and this would have weakened the brand. However, this movie shows what he could have been. As a screwball lead he had charm, athleticism, comic timing, sexy looks and a great voice, but so did Grant, Barrymore and Cooper and others and they were kind enough to leave the pirate market to him. A loss but I'll console myself with another hundred views of Captain Blood.

Errol Flynn, Rosalind Russell, Olivia de Havilland and Patric Knowles prove that "Four's a Crowd" in this 1938 comedy directed by Michael Curtiz.With such a great cast, one would think this is a classic gem. Alas, no. In fact, due to a confusing script, it's in shambles. Fun shambles, but shambles.Walter Connolly plays millionaire John Dillingwell, Olivia de Havilland is his beautiful albeit dizzy daughter, Rosalind Russell is a reporter, and Patric Knowles, who is dating de Havilland, is Russell's boss. Dillingwell is a private person with no interest in public relations. Russell's boyfriend (Flynn) runs a PR firm and wants to land the Dillingwell account. With some help from the paper, Flynn manages to make Dillingwell the most hated man in America - a man desperately in need of having his image cleaned up. Not that he agrees to it right away.The inspiration for this story is John D. Rockefeller, the most hated man in America at one time, known for his ruthless business tactics. He hired a publicist and, with the publicist's urging, began to give away his vast fortune consisting of property and money to various charities.For screwball comedy, "Four's a Crowd" had a lot of competition, which is probably why the powers that be threw everything at it but the kitchen sink. Heiresses - "It Happened One Night," "Love is News," "Libeled Lady," etc. abounded. So did the movies - and they were all better than this one.There certainly are some fun scenes and some good performances. Flynn had a good flair for comedy, as did de Havilland, though they weren't often cast that way. de Havilland's early career was in fact doing airhead ingénues, such as in "It's Love I'm After" and this one. Russell is terrific as usual, and Knowles acquits himself well.If only the script had been stronger...it's still fun, though.