The edges of this movie are tolerable. You have some fine, easily recognized actors doing some amusing bits, including Charles Laughton, Hugh Herbert, and George Chandler. The characters in the boarding house, eccentric misfits, are sweet and amusing.
The problem is the center of the movie. Why would anybody put Dorothy Lamour, one of the sexiest and most beautiful women in the world in 1948, in a movie where her leading man is a priest? Lamour is stripped of all sexiness and there's not a hint of desire in any of her scenes with George Montgomery (Rev. Tom Walker). The only emotions that she's allowed to display next to the priest is some nostalgia for their youthful friendship and a bit of anger that he doesn't help her to save her uncle's boarding house.
What should have been the center of the movie, Lamour seducing the new priest from his vows, gets sublimated into the priest trying to decide if he can be as good a priest as his dead father.
The movie is simply annoying most of the time. The sets, costumes, direction and editing are on the level of a bad, cheap, 1950's television episode. I kept checking how much time was left every five minutes.
George Montgomery, Dorothy Lamour and Charles Laughton fans might want to sit through it for the sake of cinematic completeness. Everyone else will have a difficult time making it to the end.
The problem is the center of the movie. Why would anybody put Dorothy Lamour, one of the sexiest and most beautiful women in the world in 1948, in a movie where her leading man is a priest? Lamour is stripped of all sexiness and there's not a hint of desire in any of her scenes with George Montgomery (Rev. Tom Walker). The only emotions that she's allowed to display next to the priest is some nostalgia for their youthful friendship and a bit of anger that he doesn't help her to save her uncle's boarding house.
What should have been the center of the movie, Lamour seducing the new priest from his vows, gets sublimated into the priest trying to decide if he can be as good a priest as his dead father.
The movie is simply annoying most of the time. The sets, costumes, direction and editing are on the level of a bad, cheap, 1950's television episode. I kept checking how much time was left every five minutes.
George Montgomery, Dorothy Lamour and Charles Laughton fans might want to sit through it for the sake of cinematic completeness. Everyone else will have a difficult time making it to the end.