Word: humorously
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Climax to their plodding career came in 1929, when the Labor Government made Sidney Webb Lord Passfield, put him in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for the Colonies & Dominions. Though the Webbs are now in their seventies they cannot break the working habits of a lifetime. With aged humor they half apologize for still keeping at it: "The question will arise in some quarters: Why did two aged mortals, both nearing their ninth decade, undertake a work of such magnitude? We fear our presumption must be ascribed to the recklessness of old age ... a new subject to investigate...
...altars of fame and true greatness. He has no pretensions. He does not attempt to explain life or to escape it, he presents it as he sees it, with a quiet grace and charm that is always captivating. The Negro dialect is presented echoicly without the slightest attempt at humor. The work is a lyrical pastoral, delicately beautiful. One must struggle to speak prosaicly of it when inevitably there is a rhapsody on the tip of one's tongue...
...Riley's conception of humor is broad and earthy; he's not above generous exploitation of popular susceptibility to the obvious double entendre. He realizes that, like money, sex may not be everything, but it's hard to got along without. His take is simple and though unevenly paced it has its moments. A quiet, solid little tourists home is thrown into an uproar of delicious confusion when the unexpected guest sweeps in the alluring form of Carole Arden, the luscious temptress of the silver screen. Miss Arden seems to be on a tour of personal appearances which has been...
...order to save the life of the girl he loves. Robert Taylor is the man and Irene Dunne the girl but unfortunately Taylor's acting does not approach he mature work of his leading lady who holds the spotlight. Charles Butterworth and Henry Armetta add their typical bits of humor as newly-wed and valet respectively. It is a generally mediocre piece but entertaining, nevertheless...
Although the film is played in modern dress, its humor is of another and more gentle age. Among the characters are the "conferencier a la mode", who cannot practice what he preaches; love; the countess whose strennous efforts to uphold the amenities are always failing; the pedantic and bespectacled English girl awkwardly seeking a husband; and many others of a similar comic "genre". The plot is one of clean drawing-room intrigue, arising from the misunderstanding of misplaced letters. And yet in spite of its conventional nineteenth-century machinery, the film is genuinely amusing. The lines are distinguished by their...