richard.fuller1 I couldn't believe this film had such a rich look to it in the beginning, mainly for Arthur standing in the rain in her first scene.Then she does the truly bizarre bit and runs to the little shop and orders, "a facial and a shampoo" and comes out gussied up like a typical Hollywood starlet. How about that dress? Yea, that looks inconspicuous on the busy NY street, don't it? Then we get a coffin, she faints, and McCrea ends up exchanging ties with a guy holding a gun on him.It lost me completely with all this, cuz this was all nothing but a joke.After that, I hardly paid attention and am surprised to see the reviews here involved BANK ROBBERY! I caught on to none of this. All in all, it's quite a shame, as the beginning looked purely authentic, but it all turned on 'a facial and a shampoo' for me.

vincentlynch-moonoi I was expecting a treat here. After all, there was Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, Reginald Owen, and Thomas Mitchell. I was also expecting a comedy. Wrong on both counts. The cast performances here were disappointing, and this is a drama...well...sort of.When she made this film, Jean Arthur had been in the business for 13 years, but she had only recently hit it big with "Mr. Deeds Goes To Town". Far too many of her earlier films were memorable only for their titles (such as "The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu"). But, beginning in this year, and for the next 8 years, Arthur was a force to be reckoned with at the box office. Here you see hints of the Arthur to come.Joel McCrea's finest film period began about 3 years after this film, and lasted for 3-4 years until he began concentrating on Westerns...which may have seemed financially wise at the time, but today do not exactly help one's film legacy. McCrea is "okay" here, but if you want to see him at his best, try something like "Foreign Correspondent" or "Palm Beach Story".So, you have each of these actors at something less than their best, and you'll probably be disappointed in both Reginald Owen and Thomas Mitchell (and one is rarely disappointed in Mitchell). And then there's the story line, which is a bit of a stretch. Can anyone really be as intuitive as McCrea is supposed to be in this film? And that is the question that hold the plot together...barely.And so, while I was expecting a treat here, I got a trick. I hung through until the end, although I'm not quite sure why. Ah well, they can't all be winners.

federovsky Odd mix of noir and screwball that works about as well as you would expect. The noir element is obvious from the very opening scenes - this aspect of the film is quite an eye-opener and is apparently an overlooked early example of the genre - though not the earliest: The Thin Man (1934) is the earliest film I am aware of containing the classic noir elements (and also has an ungainly admixture of screwball). Anyway, as remarkable as the noir sections are in Adventure in Manhattan, the whole thing doesn't hang together, which is a great pity. Joel McCrea is a full-of-himself writer-sleuth hired by an irritating news editor - like all news editors, on the edge of a nervous breakdown - to build up the angle on a crime story. They make heavy weather of it. It's leaden and not cute. There's a bizarre scene where they're all eating baked beans in McCrea's bedroom. Jean Arthur is a decent actress but doesn't have the right manner for this, too steely and serious. The wisecracks come out of her mouth and hit the floor. The story is hardly redeemed by the obvious twist - and the script, the characters and the actors barely give us reason to wait for it. I was hoping it would have the good grace to finish up after 65 minutes, but it took 72.

hcoursen It takes a deft touch to produce an amusing crime drama -- as Powell and Loy did for Nick and Nora and as "Mr and Mrs North" did on radio in the 40s. This one begins to get interesting as the McCrea character sneaks into a house to check out the cruel joke that has apparently been played on Jean Arthur. But it turns out that the joke is on him and a suspenseful situation becomes preposterous. The elaborate hoax seems beyond the capabilities of its practitioners. And the comment that suggests that the ring of crooks is entirely too large is accurate. The film oscillates between noir and screwball comedy and the two genre compete with each other. The film never decides what it wants to be and ends up being a generic midair collision.