Considering that this was adapted from a play (by nailing a camera to the end of the stage), you'd think the characters would have been more rounded. Shallow one-dimensional characters and a tiresome cliched story isn't the best combination for an entertaining movie.
The most disappointing aspect of this picture is that it doesn't convey any of the atmosphere you often get in a film from 1930. Maybe that's because of its stagey origin or maybe it's because it's based on a stuffy play from the early twenties? The plot has been done a million times and usually done a lot better than this. The acting is fine - not naturalistic but ok for 1930. Miriam Hopkins, in her first talkie is the most impressive and almost believable but the rest are just a bunch of actors reading lines from a script they've seemingly just been handed. It's not their fault but they're just poorly written parts.
We have stock stereotypes: stuffy, entitled and snobbish parents, spoilt, entitled and irresponsible youngsters and pure as the driven snow salt of the earth types. It's one of those lazily written films where the rich are all horrible and the poor are perfect. Not perhaps an obvious theme from Paramount considering their typical audience demographic but the rich eventually and predictably become unfeasibly lovey, lovely people so that willing appease their consciences.
I've seen worse but I'll not be searching out any more films from Fred Newmayer.
