Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

azatates There is a full sitcom environment when watching this movie, which makes the movie more funny and interesting. I like old movies, but I never thought I'd like it that much. It's a movie that makes me laugh and laugh.

create Over a drinking conversation, a friend asked me what was the darkest film ever made. Instinctively, I said Arsenic and Old Lace - a film I hadn't seen in over twenty years. My friend had never seen the film, and asked general questions about it. When I told him that it was a Frank Capra film he seemed incredulous. I guess he couldn't peg the director of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington with making a dark film.To tell the truth, neither could I - not on recall alone. That weekend, I plopped a borrowed copy into my DVD player, and watched the film again. After the first reel, which now seemed plodding, it all rushed back to me why this film was dark: It seemed that Mr. Capra had lost his naïveté, and filmed why he lost it.Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) is a famed drama critic for a New York paper. But mostly, he is known for his stance against marriage and the many books he has written mocking the institution. One Halloween, in which the Brooklyn Dodgers get into a real row of a fight, Mortimer and the love of his life - the girl next door, Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane) - get married. Mortimer, fearing the deluge of negative comments of the famed bachelor tying the knot, brings Elaine by their folks' houses to announce their marriage before they sail away for a two-month voyage. It is here where Mortimer's life falls off the cliff. When he tells the kindly old Aunts that raised him, Abby (Josephine Hull) and Martha (Jean Adair) Brewster, the news, he discovers that the nicest people in Brooklyn have been putting arsenic in their homemade elderberry wine, and knocking off lonely old gentlemen. The news gets worse. It seems that Mortimer has repressed memories of the violence that was done to him by his brother, Jonathan Brewster (Raymond Massey), when he was a child. Plus, there is the delusional uncle who thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt. In all, after a half-hour, Mortimer now fears for Elaine's safety, for he believes he is as loony as the rest of the Brewsters.By the way, this is a comedy. It was adapted from a hit Broadway play starring Mr. Frankenstein himself, Boris Karloff. He actually was supposed to be in the movie also, but couldn't leave the play. Frank Capra directed Arsenic and Old Lace in the genre of the screwball comedies of the thirties. He shot it five months after the play premiered. He had previous success in the field of screwball comedies with It Happened One Night. Old Lace also could be considered a film noir piece with the abundant nighttime location shoots, and very dark interiors. The Brewster house provided for very ominous, long shadows. But if this was a noir film - I say it is - then it would be Capra's first. And the question would be "Why"?It was an obvious choice to cast Cary Grant, who had drawn crowds to several screwball comedies since his first screen role in She Done Him Wrong. In every one of these genre roles, he played the straight, sane one - the one who gets more insane as the plot progresses. (Of particular note, in later years, Grant held a very low opinion of both She Done Him Wrong and Arsenic and Old Lace. He found She Done Him Wrong and Mae West to be too sexual. And he found Arsenic and Old Lace to be too dark and cynical.) At the time of the play's release, America was in the beginnings of WWII. And maybe dark themes were all that could be tolerated by an entertainment seeking public. It and Sweeny Todd are definitely the darkest of the light theatrical subjects. And strangely enough both plays were released around American wars. Maybe funny comedies had to show a dark sense of humor. Or light musicals for that matter had to explore horror. Unlike Sweeny Todd the movie, Arsenic and Old Lace was a hit - mainly because it was shot within months after it opened, and released soon after it closed. By that time Europe was close to D-Day.

Python Hyena Arsenic and Old Lace (1944): Dir: Frank Capra / Cast: Cary Grant, Priscilla Lane, Josephine Hull, Jean Adair, Raymond Massey: Overrated piece of junk that looks like something Frank Capra shat out of his ass after having made worthy films like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It Happened One Night. Well, what happened one night is this sh*t was conjured up and labeled as a classic. It stars Cary Grant who goes hopelessly over the top as a newly wed whose two nut job aunts mercy kill lonely men by poisoning their wine. Grant discovers a body in the window seat that Capra was too cheap to actually show the audience because apparently this garbage is a comedy. Apparently everyone in this house belongs in an insane asylum. His brother thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt and yells, "Charge!" He barges up the stairs about fifty times to the point where a well placed trap door would have been appreciated. Then we have Raymond Massey and Peter Lorre as villains who resemble Frankenstein and Igor in performances best left on the cutting room floor. The worst scene has Grant tied to a chair while some half wit cop fails to see the obvious, and this goes on and on until the viewer goes as mad as the characters. Pointless drivel with production values that resemble a cheap stage play and characters that are complete morons. This film should be laced with gasoline and a match. Score: 1 / 10

richard-1787 I saw this play in the theater years ago and thought it was a masterpiece.The cast of this movie is first-rate, and includes many of my favorite actors.Frank Capra is one of my favorite directors, in both comedy - *You Can't Take It with You* - and drama - *Mr. Smith Goes to Washington*, etc.Why, then, did this movie seem so flat to me? Cary Grant, whom I have enjoyed in many comedies, seems to ham it up far out of all proportion.The timing often seems bad.And nothing explains how Mortimer, on his wedding day, can completely forget about his attractive bride - in an era when the audience could well have assumed that they had not already spent the night together.I watched this whole movie - at 118 minutes, it's long for a comedy - in the hopes that something would work for me. It just didn't.I must have been in the wrong mood, but I was really in a very good mood.