MonsterPerfect Good idea lost in the noise

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Winifred The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

richard.fuller1 I couldn't believe this film had such a rich look to it in the beginning, mainly for Arthur standing in the rain in her first scene.Then she does the truly bizarre bit and runs to the little shop and orders, "a facial and a shampoo" and comes out gussied up like a typical Hollywood starlet. How about that dress? Yea, that looks inconspicuous on the busy NY street, don't it? Then we get a coffin, she faints, and McCrea ends up exchanging ties with a guy holding a gun on him.It lost me completely with all this, cuz this was all nothing but a joke.After that, I hardly paid attention and am surprised to see the reviews here involved BANK ROBBERY! I caught on to none of this. All in all, it's quite a shame, as the beginning looked purely authentic, but it all turned on 'a facial and a shampoo' for me.

gridoon2018 "Adventures In Manhattan" begins promisingly, with some genuine surprises in its first half; then, unfortunately, it runs out of gas and becomes dull, until a cute romantic ending ("I hate you, darling") that does leave you with a smile on your face. Jean Arthur and Joel Mccrea make a good, slightly offbeat pair, but I think it was a mistake on the screenwriters' part to reveal to the audience so early who the mysterious art robber is; it makes the deductions / predictions of the criminologist that Joel McCrea plays seem less brilliant than they're supposed to be, and also removes nearly all the mystery elements from the story. And despite the title, the only action in the film happens on a theatrical stage. ** out of 4.

Neil Doyle An overly confident crime reporter (JOEL McCREA) and a clever actress (JEAN ARTHUR) must match wits against an even more clever art thief (REGINALD OWEN) who poses as a theatrical producer to cover his real proclivities as a thief. His theater is staging a play with heavy military artillery to disguise the noise of his thieves blasting a tunnel into the bank.Some crisp dialog and some nice performances aren't enough to conceal that this is pretty flimsy material. Still, it does manage to show that both McCrea and Arthur had a natural flair for light material tinged with a hint of mystery.Unfortunately, the script involving stolen art work and the attempted theft of the Sunburst Diamond from a bank vault, doesn't permit either one to create more than one-dimensional characters and after an original start, the story runs out of wacky ideas and turns serious before it reverts to comedy again.McCrea and Arthur play their roles as though they were imitating the Nick and Nora Charles brand of humor in comedy with mystery. With stronger material, this would have worked. THOMAS MITCHELL is good as a newspaper man who fires and hires McCrea in moments of great exasperation.It's light stuff and highly forgettable except for the charm of the two stars.

bkoganbing After a big success in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town which really established Jean Arthur as the rival in screwball comedy to Carole Lombard, she got cast in some routine films that sought to take advantage of her new image. Adventure in Manhattan was one of them and while it's plot verges on the silly it could have been a lot better, but for some really bad miscasting.The guy who could have brought off the role of the wise cracking crime reporter was over at Warner Brothers. This part James Cagney could have phoned over to Columbia, but in the hands of all American hero Joel McCrea it really looks forced. Some high profile robberies have taken place and crime reporter McCrea thinks and has written that the culprit of all these has been a master criminal along the lines of Professor Moriarty. Problem is that this guy is believed dead by all, but McCrea.McCrea is right and it's revealed early enough in the film to be Reginald Owen who is now in the guise of a theatrical producer. And Jean Arthur is an aspiring young ingénue in the cast of a World War I play he's producing. One of the problems I had with this plot was that Professor Moriarty and many of the master criminals in real life and fiction usually work alone or with as few accomplices as possible. The scheme that Owen has involves a considerable gang and I really can't swallow that somewhere along the line somebody doesn't slip up. Thomas Mitchell in one of his earliest screen roles is McCrea's editor and he's his usual good self. Arthur makes the best of a routine assignment and it took someone like Preston Sturges to bring out the real comedian in Joel McCrea.