Before us perhaps one of the funniest and brightest images ever played by the great Bob Hope!
Perhaps he is inferior to such masterpieces of “machine gun” impact as “My favorite brunette” and “Road to Morroco”. However, believe me, just wild, unpredictable, unprincipled, uncontrollable farces played by this incomparable clown will not leave you indifferent!
If it's Brunette. Hope brilliantly and ruthlessly rolled by the standards and stamps of “noir-thrillers”, then here he is no less mockingly funny, grotesquely mocked the legend of the great seducer of women’s hearts and a clever fencer – Casanova!
The character itself is quite interesting, funny and charismatic, and in the performance of Hope, as if by the blink of an eye, he turns into a flawless weasel, a hilarious knave, a cocky moron and a brilliant cunning! Of course, you need to take into account the fact that Hope took a lot from the Marx Brothers - for example, the same play of words, a kind of clutter to their trademark equation of phrases. But there is a lot here and according to Hopeovsky - curves, compressions, plastic, physical parody ...
In the plot, the film resembles a pure farce, a parody, if I may express myself. Although the plot itself is quite logical, and very original executed, but the attention is no longer focused on the action (which is here well very dynamic) and on the acting field, Hope with his bright, to the point of murderous roles, "drilling" optimism fights hard, you want to laugh from only facial expressions, and when he begins to "attack" the viewer with all the improvised techniques, then if there is no homeric hysterics, you laugh to tears anyway. Norman McCloud, the director of this film, in fact gave Hope a whole benefit, a territory where the comedian knew absolutely no boundaries and limits to his research, where he dispersed in earnest!
But in addition to Hope, McCloud took the place here and such stars as Basil Rathbone, Joan Fontaine who looked with Hope just amazing. But surprises from the creator do not end here, if you wish, you can see such legends, not listed in the credits, but quite strongly influenced the film – Lon Cheney Jr., Marla English and the “man with 1000 faces” himself. - Vincent Price!! Played a small but very bright role in the beginning of the film!
Perhaps this is not a masterpiece of comedy, but this is a very high-quality work, where Hope just blooms, plays so funny that you do not want to break away from this action absolutely, really the fire in his Casanova is inexhaustible, he lights up unbridled energy, gives the viewer a lot of positivity and beautiful mood, truly Hope's talent will not be influenced by the inexorable passage of time, he is eternal as well as the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Bing Crosby!
9 out of 10