ThiefHott
Too much of everything
FuzzyTagz
If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.
Jonah Abbott
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
Jay Raskin
At the very beginning of this film, Nina Tennyson (Leona Maricle) tells lover Henrie Saffron (Erik Rhodes) that she is going to marry millionaire Kenneth Nolan (Joel McCrea) "so you and I can live happily ever afterwards." She explains that she is going to marry Nolan for his money and then leave him. Henrie say, "Holy Mackerel, what a way to make a living." "Do you know any other way to make a living," she wisecracks.Besides his fiancé, Nolan's father, B.J. Nolan (Charles Winninger) is also after his money. He has started a suburban housing community called "Nolan Heights" and creditors are going to ruin him if his son doesn't invest in the project. His son has specifically been ordered in his mother's will, not to invest in his father's hair-brained schemes. Thus both father and son are in trouble. At this moment, Virginia Travis (Mariam Hopkins) shows up looking for a job as an architect for Nolan's "Nolan Heights" housing project. She gives a wild and hilarious introductory speech:"I know what you're thinking that I'm a girl. Yes, Mr. Nolan, but I have a man's courage, a man's vision, a man's attack...For seven years, I studied like a man, researched like a man. There is nothing feminine about my mind. Seven year ago I gave up a perfectly nice engagement with a charming, wealthy old man because I chose a practical career. I left him at the church to become an architect and today I'm ready and he's dead. Here I am Mr. Nolan with the key to Nolan Heights. I've found a way to make us both rich. I can make you a fortune. Why I have a million dollars right here in my hand."At this point, she faints dead away. A doctor is called and he explains that she fainted due to hunger. She hadn't eaten in 48 hours. "49 hours," Virginia corrects him, coming out of her faint.This is a very sweet movie where all the main characters are both con-artists and lovers.I think Mariam Hopkins is brilliant in her performance and deserved an academy award. Unlike Katherine Hepburn, who appears loving, but feather-brained, in the popular screwball comedy, "Bringing Up Baby (1939), Hopkins manages to be both loving and smart. Everybody is flawed and a little bit of a screwball in this comedy. That makes it a very wise comedy, indeed.
vincentlynch-moonoi
I have mixed feelings about this film, and perhaps that can be explained mostly by somewhat of an aversion I have against Miriam Hopkins. Mostly I dislike her performances, although every once in a while she seems to be just right for a part. For example, "These Three", "The Children's' Hour", and some of her films with Bette Davis are the exceptions, when I enjoy her performances. In "Woman Chases Man", I think she did a decent job of playing a scheming woman who is out to bilk a man (Joel McCrea), but also protecting him (out of a growing love) from another woman is attempting to bilk him.Probably because of his preference later in his career to concentrate on Westerns, Joel McCrae is a much underrated actor, and demonstrated here...though this is hardly his best role (watch instead, for example, "Foreign Correspondent").Charles Winninger as the McCrae's father is quite good here, and it's a hoot seeing Broderick Crawford playing a slightly crooked butler.The story -- a former millionaire and his wealthy son have differences about how to spend the family fortune -- is funny, and occasionally a tad silly...but I guess that's what screwball comedies are supposed to be. Some of the dialog is pretty clever, other times it devolves into being foolish, but overall it's a pretty good story.Recommended for a watch, but it probably won't end up on your DVD shelf.
chipe
My mouth was agape throughout this screwball comedy. The reason: this is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I was about to say that there isn't a single good joke or scene in the entire embarrassing movie, by, Ah Ha, I thought of one: there is a scene where several process servers are looking for the hiding Charles Winninger. Outside his office in the hall is Miriam Hopkins reading a letter of recommendation addressed to Winninger. Hearing her speech, the process servers mistakenly race down the stairs, thinking Winninger went that way. Believe it or not, that is the only decent scene in the movie. Everything else makes one cringe -- implausible silly story, terrible pratfalls and scrambles in a tree, nothing dialog, childish drunken scenes, etc. To give a feeling as to how bad everything is, Joel McCrae is returning to his mansion from a trip abroad. Hopkins is pretending to be a friend of his father. She recruits two friends to be servants though they know nothing about how to act as servants. Broderick Crawford is in his old movie usher uniform that is supposed to be a butler's uniform, and Hopkins is cutting out the movie theater patches as McCrae is knocking on the door. Meanwhile, through most of the movie, Winninger is living in the mansion, though he hides from his son McCrae because Winninger is supposed to be away. Excruciating. As someone said, see it only if you are die-hard McCrae or Hopkins fans.
VLeung
I'm not sure why this film doesn't work. It has everything I love about screwball comedies in it, and the wonderful Joel McCrea is gorgeous.Where does it go wrong? I'm not quite as knocked out by Preston Sturges as the rest of the world because I think he's too prone to pointlessly noisy madcap chase scenes, and more often that not his endings suck a lot, but Preston Sturges' screwballs really work (apart from the chases and the endings) and this film doesn't. The difference, then, must be script. Sturges' scripts are superb, glittering things, that you just want to eat with a spoon, and Woman Chases Man is a fairly charming film with a lifeless script.
