What an odd little comedy. TURNABOUT is about a bickering upper middle class husband and wife who magically switch roles, although it takes over half the film to get to the switch. And when it comes, it makes little sense: the husband wakes up in the wife's nightgown and bed, and the wife wakes up in his PJs and bed. Further, he speaks with her voice and she with his, which means their dialog had to be dubbed. So what should have been a very funny and slightly ribald comedy is an exercise in cringe-inducing amazement. I am not sure why director Hal Roach simply didn't have the husband speak in a swishy manner to match his swishy body motions and the wife talk in a masculine manner and walk like a man. By the way, the wife is played by a not terribly convincing Carol Landis. Perhaps the idea of Landis playing butch was too much for Hollywood. It's not like the husband, played by a not terribly engaging actor named John Hubbard, wasn't swishing around enough and speaking in Landis's voice! Adolphe Menjou is top billed and in excellent form as one of Hubbard's partners in an ad agency. There's some great cheeescake involving models disrobing and wearing not much for product photo shoots -- and this was 1940, mind you, not pre-code 1934. Mary Astor is along for the ride as Menjou's wife, and the legendary Franklin Pangborn plays -- what else? -- a prissy client named Franklin Pingboom, whom the agency secretaries have a field day trying to pronounce correctly. I am actually surprised how much raciness they got away with in this Hayes-era production. They even work in a KKK joke, albeit not a very good one. There's a running bit involving a very large dog, but it doesn't come to much. Maybe they were trying to do a THIN MAN-type flick. If so, it didn't work. P.S. I agree with the reviewer who said how much better the movie might have been with TOPPER stars Constance Bennett and Cary Grant. Coincidentally Thorne Smith wrote both TOPPER and TURNABOUT.