Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

movingpicturegal Delightfully fun romantic comedy about Jack, behind on his rent, Mary, behind on her rent, and the well-meaning landlord who comes up with an idea for a rather novel arrangement for the two - to share Jack's attic apartment. Mary has a job selling ice boxes, Jack works the night shift, so Mary gets the apartment from 8 P.M. to 8 A.M. and Jack from 8 A.M. to 8 P.M. - and the two of them hate each other instantly and pull mean tricks on each other (stuff like putting his suit in the shower and cutting her bed so it collapses), though have never actually met. But wait! They do meet each other one day in front of a local delicatessen, and like each other, but have no idea they are actually living in the same apartment.Sounds like a plot we've all heard before - but this film was really, really cute and fun to watch. Ginger Rogers is gorgeous and funny as Mary, Norman Foster gives a steady, likable performance as Jack, and Laura Hope Crews really steals the scenes she is in playing a rich, drunken old dame who wants to "help" handsome Jack's career (he also happens to be a struggling artist) - she is hilarious. Okay - here's a few observations: how come Mary and Jack have never, ever seen each other before even though they have been living in the same brownstone on separate floors for at least long enough to both be overdue on the rent (you would think they would have at least passed each other on the stairs or out at the curb or maybe on the weekend a few times), and how about that company picnic where everyone has left except our two stars and ALL the garbage and trash from the picnicking is just left behind on the tables! Ah well - all in all, I found this to be a very enjoyable, funny, well done film.

Neil Doyle There's a feeling of deja vu to the plot of RAFTER ROMANCE about two people who aren't aware of each other's identity until they fall in love, but in 1933 it must have seemed quite an original idea.At any rate, it gives GINGER ROGERS and NORMAN FOSTER a nice chance to show what they could do with light comedy and tender romance. They play two roommates who work different shifts but who eventually meet and fall in love. (Shades of YOU'VE GOT MAIL and other such stories). And oddly enough, ROBERT BENCHLEY would be making a play for Ginger as a lecherous wolf, just as he would some ten years later in THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR when he suggested she slip into something more comfortable.After a series of pranks and misunderstandings, Foster and Rogers find each other at the company picnic and promptly fall in love.Watch for LAURA HOPE CREWS (Aunt Pittypat of GWTW) as a woman who wants to "keep" Norman Foster--and GUINN WILLIAMS as a brawny taxicab driver.Summing up: Good fun with an early look at Ginger.

MetroMike This delightful romantic comedy, unseen since 1959, shows how fresh and funny movies could be in 1933, the last year before the Hayes Production Code clamped down on the film industry and enforced mandatory wholesomeness -- banning anything that might "lower the moral standards of those who see it," including almost any reference to sex.Many pre-Code films look antiquated and creaky today, as the characters earnestly discuss sex, adultery, divorce, and other Serious Adult Topics. This one plays it all for a farce, with Ginger Rogers and Norman Foster forced by economics to share the same attic apartment in 12-hour shifts, him by day and her by night. They never meet and communicate only through increasingly nasty notes and pranks, coming to despise one another as roommates even as they're unknowingly flirting and falling in love in the outside world.At the same time, Rogers is trying to fend off the amorous advances of her boss (Robert Benchley), who sees a man entering her room as she's leaving with him and apparently assumes she's turning tricks on the side, while Foster is trying to discourage an elderly millionaire (Laura Hope Crews) who wants to take him away from his sordid life and bring him home with her as her boy-toy. In the final denouement, they're explaining to everyone that they're "not married, just living together," while trying to decide whether they actually love each other or hate each other. (Love, as you might suspect, wins out).

F Gwynplaine MacIntyre A previous IMDb reviewer has stated that 'Rafter Romance' is a 'rip-off' (that's the other reviewer's term) of a German musical called 'Me By Day, You By Night'. Apparently that reviewer is unaware that *both* of these films have borrowed their premise from 'Box and Cox', an English play written by John Maddison Morton in 1847. This play deals with two tradesmen who rent the same room from an unscrupulous landlady, each man believing himself the sole tenant. Because the two men have different work schedules, the ruse is not discovered straight away. This play was once so popular in Britain that 'to Box and Cox it' became a common term for an arrangement in which two people willingly shared accommodations meant for only one person.The innovation of 'Rafter Romance' (and its predecessor) is that the two tenants are now a man and a woman, who inevitably develop a romance. As is usual in these cornball movies, the guy and the gal detest each other until they fall into each other's arms. Hoo boy.The landlord in this film is played by George Sidney, a character actor who specialised in playing Jewish stereotypes that were meant to be sympathetic. George Sidney was never as annoying as the odious Harry Green (the Jewish equivalent of Stepin Fetchit) but Sidney's depictions of Jewish characters are still exaggerated and embarrassing to watch.The single most notable thing about 'Rafter Romance' is that, to my knowledge, this is the earliest Hollywood film to make reference to Hitler and the rise of Nazism. At one point in this movie, landlord Eckbaum (Sidney) discovers his teenage son Julius engaged in chalking swastikas on the walls. Eckbaum and his son are clearly meant to be Jewish. Admittedly, nobody in Hollywood in 1933 had any real idea of what Hitler was planning for the Jews in Europe ... still, it's surprising to see a film depicting a Jewish teenager who thinks that swastikas are a joke. His father is, quite properly, angered by this display of the Nazi symbol.A very shameful aspect of Hollywood history is the documented fact that all of the major Hollywood studios continued to do business with the Third Reich as late as 1939. Hollywood's leading ladies were medically documented as 'Aryan' so that their films could be distributed in Nazi Germany and Austria. For the same reason, Hollywood's leading men were documented as 'Aryan and uncircumcised'. Except for Darryl Zanuck at Twentieth Century-Fox, all the Hollywood studio executives who colluded in this policy were Jewish ... but clearly had no objection to doing business with Hitler. I'm surprised that 'Rafter Romance' contains a scene depicting swastikas unfavourably, as this sequence would have rendered the film Verboten in Germany and Austria. (Maybe the scene was cut out for German release: it isn't crucial to the movie's plot.) Apart from this, the movie contains nothing notable. Robert Benchley does his usual unfunny befuddled characterisation: I've never understood the appeal of this man. I'll rate 'Rafter Romance' 4 out of 10.