Crwthod
A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.
TrueHello
Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
Juana
what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
bkoganbing
World War II is over and Maisie Ravier is now finished her Rosie the Riveteer thing and is looking for more traditional employment for women. She's even enrolled in a business school and got her diploma. But when she goes job hunting all the potential bosses see a former showgirl and a quick roll in the hay. In order to get a job and keep the wolves at bay Ann Sothern dresses down and gets a job working for George Murphy.Where to her complete surprise she finds her past experience in a war plant a real asset. Murphy is designing a brand helicopter and it's a hush hush project. But he doesn't know that tycoon Paul Harvey and his daughter Hillary Brooke are looking to steal it for themselves. Murphy's even got a Quisling in his own ranks.This is one of the best of the Maisie series with Sothern given some really good comic bits to work with. She gets slipped a Mickey Finn and does a great drunk act with tips no doubt from Red Skelton until she plunges into a swimming pool. The climax of the film is having Sothern fly Murphy's helicopter. It must be a good machine if a flying novice can handle it.One of the problems of the Maisie series is that she's gotten involved with some man in each of the films. But this is the first one where Sothern actually got a formal marriage proposal. And you know it once again didn't take because there was one more in the series that was so popular at MGM.But as Maisie Sothern is at the top of her game in Up Goes Maisie.
MartinHafer
The casting for "Up Goes Maisie" is rather strange. After all, a few years earlier George Murphy was cast as Maisie's boyfriend in "Ringside Maisie" and here he is again as Maisie's boyfriend--and Murphy is NOT playing the same guy in both films! This must have been a bit confusing to audience members who went to both movies--especially since she becomes engaged to both guys! Maisie has just graduated from Business School and her prospects are quite good. However, inexplicably, she has trouble getting work because every time she goes to apply for a job she is sexually harassed. It's all very silly, as they portray Ann Sothern as if she's hotter than Rita Hayworth and Lana Turner put together. The bottom line is that they lay this angle on way too thick and it seemed like sloppy writing to have the 37 year-old actress playing such a sexual magnet.Eventually, Maisie gets a job with Mr. Morton and his team of workers who are trying to build a prototype helicopter. She not only is the secretary but does some of the welding and checks the books. And, since she is a sexual magnet, soon Mr. Morton (Murphy) is head-over-heels for her and asks her to marry him. However, neither is aware that a very manipulative woman (Hillary Brooke) and her rich daddy will do anything to ensure that the project fails--so that the evil woman can catch Morton on the rebound--as well as steal his helicopter plans. So, they need to discredit Maisie and make sure that the 'copter is a dud. Can Maisie and the gang spot the ruse? And, will Maisie FINALLY get her happy ending? So is this film any good? Well, it does have its problems. As I mentioned above, making Maisie so sexually appealing was pretty dumb and was handled poorly. Additionally, Stephen McNally's character was obviously evil he first time the camera hit him. He was just too obvious and made you wonder why the characters didn't recognize this. The same could be said for Hillary Brooke. There is also a sequence near the end where Maisie is supposedly flying the helicopter--and you can pretty clearly see the string on the model! Despite all this, it's still a cute film and is quite watchable--as are all the Maisie films. But it does suffer from a few problems which should have been ironed out first. It's just not up to the usual higher standards for the series.
jjnxn-1
Bless Ann Sothern for her natural charm and ability to make even the most featherbrained script entertaining. Such is the case with Up Goes Maisie, the series almost always stretched belief but this one takes it to an extreme degree. It starts off innocuously enough with Maisie graduating from secretarial school and reentering the work force now that she off the swing shift. It even ventures to show helicopter innovation which really started to pick up as WWII was winding down by way of Maisie's new employer and romantic interest, second tier leading man George Murphy. The movie moves along well enough in an uninspired fashion with standard villains and assorted complications but it tips into surrealism at the climax. Suddenly as the title says Up Goes Maisie hovering over Los Angeles in a copter although she's never flown in her life!! What really pushes the limit is when while she seems to float effortlessly outside an office building and Connie Gilchrist, repeating from Swing Shift Maisie although in a completely different role, passes a telephone out to her! Of course it works perfectly and she manages to manipulate the machine to the exact spot she wants to! Not only that but she also manages to do all this and not be smudged of dirtied in the least with the enormous bow atop her head still being pristine. Absurd but there's always Ann Sothern who is so darn appealing she makes this sort of foolishness palatable.
gridoon2018
"Up Goes Maisie" has an interesting start, which makes a social statement on how hard it was for a woman to find a decent steady job in post-WWII America without having to compromise for the unwanted advances of dirty-minded middle-aged bosses who don't understand the meaning of the word "no"; things haven't changed so much over the years, I guess, though the men (usually) go at it more discreetly these days. The climax is also pretty crazy, with Maisie flying a helicopter all on her own. But the rest of the movie is almost determinedly average. Did we really have to know exactly who the bad guys / two-timers are all along? How can Maisie fall in such deep love with a man so quickly? And why was a big catfight between Maisie and Hillary Brooke's character set up so carefully and then never followed through? (Maisie hits her once with her knee and it's all over). Rhetorical questions. ** out of 4.
