Dinner at Eight

While the whole thing never completely comes together, the whole cast is very enjoyable and all the individual parts are very funny.

Viewed July 27, 2019.

Suffers from the star-studded, important picture syndrome, but it still has some fine moments and it moves along at a decent pace.

Pretty underwhelming. I expected more than only the last 15% of the movie to take place at the dinner itself. The plot kept my attention.

Yet another one of those "classics" that looks mediocre compared to more modern movies. Slow and plodding. Any plot twists you can see coming a mile away.

Sort of nice but I have never understood what the big deal is

The Great Depression hits the upper-class in this George Cukor film. It's basically a showcase for actors, working from a well-written script. Marie Dressler comes off best (John Barrymore is alternately great and hammy --he'd fuse those two traits better the following year in Twentieth Century).

My biggest beef with the movie is that it seems to be gaining momentum right when it ends. Otherwise, it's a lot of cross connecting dramatics, and rarely do we get more than one of the players in the same scene. Harlow, Dressler, and Beery run off with the results handily.

89.00

A dramedy of epic proportions.

88.000

Subtitle: Other People Have Problems, Too. With a movie that keeps talking about this gigantic dinner party, it's a letdown that we conclude just before the actual dinner -- which likely would have had the fireworks set up by all the subplots the movie actually shows. The dialogue is great (if a little slow for modern audiences), and the cast is quite good. It just felt like it started (and ended) in the wrong place.

More an amusing farce than a genuinely great comedy, but the concept is really good. Each character is flawed, if not contemptible, as most of them are. It feels like with a slightly sharper script and better directing, this could have been one of the great films of its time.

It's neat to see all these stars of the 1930 together in a film, especially the Barrymores. The characters and situations, for the most part, are interesting. But the predictable nature of some of the events left me feeling a tad bored at times. Over all though, a pretty entertaining and often times moving film.

MGM does it again. Bringing all their big names together for another all-star extravaganza! John Barrymore is a washed-up drunken actor who's life falls apart bit by bit. John is good, but it's not his best performance. His long scenes tend to drift off to nothing. The life of the show are the couple Wallace Beery & Jean Harlow and grand old lady Marie Dressler in one of her final big roles before passing. Her scenes with Lionel Barrymore are gold. Not a perfect film, but it is a lovely movie!

A really theatrical warmup of sorts for Rules of the Games. It doesn't really try at all to distance itself from its stage origins, but something about rich assholes lying to each other and keeping up appearances is still entertaining to me. I guess there's a little of Abigail's Party in there too, but not nearly as funny. Sort of a fitting double bill with the Grand Budapest actually what with the world falling apart right outside the bourgeois' window. So yes, it reminds me of movies I like.