Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

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

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Prismark10 Sylvia Scarlett is a film which in some ways is ahead of its time but is also structurally confusing, a hybrid comedy drama with a mixed up script which in some ways makes little sense.The movie opens in Paris where a desperate Henry Scarlett (Edmund Gwenn) tells his daughter Sylvia (Katherine Hepburn) that he is sought by the police and they sail for Britain with Sylvia dressed as a young man called Sylvester to head off suspicion.In the ship they meet swindler Jimmy Monkley (Cary Grant) where they develop a con act where Sylvester is left destitute and they gather money from passers by to help him out. They then inexplicably travel as a music hall act with Sylvia's father becoming obsessed with Monkley's associates who is about the same age as his daughter.It is unclear why Sylvia continues to act like a male even when they are in Britain and she really is not that convincing as a young boy. She later falls in love with a bohemian artist and reveals herself to him while Monkley falls for the artist's ex girlfriend.This is a curious film, but also rather convoluted with a messy story that makes little sense. It is worth watching because of an early starring role for Grant but I expected something more tighter from director George Cukor.

Michael_Elliott Sylvia Scarlett (1935) ** (out of 4) After her father (Edmund Gwenn) gets into some trouble, Sylvia Scarlett (Katharine Hepburn) decides to sneak him out of France. She decides to dress up as a boy named Sylvester and before long they meet Jimmy (Cary Grant) and the three "men" are out getting whatever money they can. When Sylvester meets Michael (Brian Aherne) "he" finally has the desire to come out as the woman she really is.SYLVIA SCARLETT is a really, really strange movie and it's even stranger when you consider the era that it came out. Apparently reviews were mostly negative when the film was released but it seems over the years more people have discovered the film and it has become somewhat of a cult movie. With that said, I personally found it to be rather boring, unfunny and I honestly didn't find too much here to enjoy.The biggest problem I had with the film is that it didn't make me laugh and I thought the story was rather stupid to say the least. I mean, once the daughter and father are out of France there's really no need for her to pretend to be a man. I'm not sure what the point of her remaining a man was but it just doesn't add anything to the picture. I'd argue that the lack of laughs are a major problem but another is the fact that Sylvia and Michael characters have no chemistry at all.Speaking of Hepburn, she's game in the film but I honestly wouldn't say this was a "good" performance. Both Gwenn and Aherne are decent in their supporting parts but it's Grant who easily steals the picture with his charming and good-natured performance. The film's most memorable scene is when a woman, thinking Hepburn is a man, comes onto him and the two kiss, which has to be one of the earliest examples of this in a Hollywood picture.

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . instead of its actual setting amid England during the 1930s, Katharine Hepburn as Victor\Victoria--oops, let me scroll back--as Sylvia\Sylvester would be in Big Trouble. As Sylvester, the mannish Hepburn (she hurdles more fences and window sills than even Edwin Moses) would risk incarceration if she drifted into 2017's Tar Heel Country and entered a public john consistent with her duds, but not her birth certificate. However, if Sylvester enters No Man's Land, the Old Biddies of N.C.'s Birther Movement would have a cow as soon as they glimpsed her in drag. The DVD jewel case labels SYLVIA SCARLETT as Kate's "most controversial film," anticipating the hostile takeover of America by the Rich People Party Sex Police led by Veep Pence (who, by the way, has not yet locked up self-confessed serial finger rapist and court-documented marital sex assaulter Rump). Within four years, these Narrow-Minded Fascist Thought Police no doubt will get their sweaty clutches on the copy of SYLVIA SCARLETT I just watched, and either burn it or crush it with one of their Humvee Halftracks. Every American library and school can expect its collections purged of ALL provocative, entertaining, and\or witty books, periodicals, and movies which pose any risk of awakening a semblance of Humanity, Conscience, Common Sense, or Critical Thinking that could be hibernating deep within a Tar Heel Pea Brain.

writers_reign It's difficult to imagine the story conferences on this one which is neither fish nor fowl, equally difficult to imagine the talents involved - Grant, Hepburn, Cukor - signing on for something so bizarre unless one or more of them had seen and admired First A Girl which featured the cross-dressing motif and/or The Good Companions which featured a group of touring concert-party performers. There's virtually no attempt at credibility from start to finish with characters being introduced then vanishing more or less as they please. It is always going to be interesting to see Hepburn and Grant in anything and THIS Grant is light-years away from the urbane, sophisticated light comedian persona by which he is best known; here he plays a cockney would-be lovable rogue in what may well be a dress rehearsal for his similar role in None But The Lonely Heart almost a decade later. Before we have time to adjust to one plot-line i.e. the three scammers, we are into another, the strolling players, with neither fully satisfying. Worth one viewing for Grant-Hepburn buffs but won't stand up to a second.