While something less than a barrel of laughs, LUCKY PARTNERS is charming enough for its first hour or so. With Ronald Colman and Ginger Rogers as its stars this is hardly a surprise. Though some disagree, it seems to me that the main conceit is completely plausible. Out of the blue a stranger (Colman) wishes a bookseller (Rogers) "Good luck" as he passes her on the street. As it happens, she immediately has a stroke of good fortune. Mild superstition being as realistic a trait as you're likely to find in any character, she decides to try her new luck with an Irish Sweepstakes ticket, going in on it with Colman for good measure. We see that he's an artist with some sort of personal secret who has been living in self-imposed isolation for some years. He seems about ready for some interpersonal contact again and Rogers is an undeniably pleasant subject for interpersonal contact. Thus his "experiment".
These circumstances are then played out in the expected screwball fashion with a heavy accent on the romantic. The Rogers/Colman pairing isn't exactly lightning caught in a bottle but it's pleasant, the supporting characters (Spring Byington, Jack Carson, others) are more than competent. Playing Ginger's aunt, Byington even gets the best line in the movie. About the French novel she's been caught reading: "I know it's not exactly moral, but the French make everything seem so logical." So things are going along okay until, as someone said, they appear to run out of ideas and resort to a final courtroom scene. Not an uncommon way to end a movie in those days, this one is uniquely lifeless and uninspired. We mostly lose the thread of our stars' love story/hi jinks and replace these with...what? I'm not sure. I'm not even enamored of Henry Davenport's performance as the judge, too cute by half IMHO, which admittedly may make me unique. In any event, that ending might cause you to forget that what had preceded it hadn't been half bad: 6/10 stars.
These circumstances are then played out in the expected screwball fashion with a heavy accent on the romantic. The Rogers/Colman pairing isn't exactly lightning caught in a bottle but it's pleasant, the supporting characters (Spring Byington, Jack Carson, others) are more than competent. Playing Ginger's aunt, Byington even gets the best line in the movie. About the French novel she's been caught reading: "I know it's not exactly moral, but the French make everything seem so logical." So things are going along okay until, as someone said, they appear to run out of ideas and resort to a final courtroom scene. Not an uncommon way to end a movie in those days, this one is uniquely lifeless and uninspired. We mostly lose the thread of our stars' love story/hi jinks and replace these with...what? I'm not sure. I'm not even enamored of Henry Davenport's performance as the judge, too cute by half IMHO, which admittedly may make me unique. In any event, that ending might cause you to forget that what had preceded it hadn't been half bad: 6/10 stars.