Popular reviews

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  Review by russman ★★★½

  Favorite existential quote: "What is food?"

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  Review by sarah ★★★★ 2

  "Oh mother, Godfrey loves me! He put me in the shower!"

  Irene Bullock, queen of theatrics, drama, and maneuvers! Saying things like "life is but an empty bubble", my girl has MASTERED the art of melodrama!

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  Review by eely ★★★★½ 2

  “I never can think of the right thing to say ‘til everybody’s gone home.”

  I would also dress myself in my most extravagant black dress and permanently situate myself in dramatic pose number 8 if william powell wouldn’t allow me into his bedroom.

  also, the blooper reel on the criterion edition is one minute of pure delight in which carole lombard and william powell swear at each other with stars in their eyes and I’m even more in love with them now than I was before, if that’s even possible.

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★

  73

  So eloquently satirizes class disparities after the Great Depression that you'll almost miss how exacting and effortless its romance is. Final few minutes had me charmed beyond belief.

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  Review by cuckoochanel ★★★★★ 15

  I’m midway through a pretty intensive certification program, and the facilitator just revealed that 40% of our grade will be determined by a GROUP PROJECT heretofore undisclosed, extremely complex and due two weeks from Thanksgiving. Righteous. So, what better way to warm the cockles of my flogged spirits than to cozy up with an all-time banger and one of my absolute favorite films.

  Gregory La Cava’s sparkling screwball romantic comedy My Man Godfrey triumphs in both its quip-laced script and the soaring performances from the principal cast. William Powell (who I maintain is the Old Hollywood equivalent of Richard) is the eternally poised Godfrey, a former prodigal son to a prominent Chicago family, reduced to the ash pile after a…

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  Review by Sara Clements ★★★★

  I truly enjoy some fun discourse about how nuts rich people are and no film has ever done it better.

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  Review by nora ★★★★★ 2

  not to hyperbolize but this is the funniest movie ever made and carole lombard is a genius and drunk william powell has cured me of my quarantine moping

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  Review by eely ★★★★

  “you mind if i talked a little bit while you catch your breath?” 

  “i’d love it.”

  if your movie doesn’t include a scene where a woman is hysterically crying while a man pretends to be a gorilla and jumps on all the furniture in the room and climbs up the walls, is it really worth watching?

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  Review by Richard Chandler ★★★★½ 10

  "The only difference between a derelict and a man is a job."

  Former cartoonist/animator turned comedy specialist Gregory La Cava realized his most enduring success with this irrepressible 1936 screwball classic. Adapted by Morrie Ryskind from an Eric Hatch novel of the previous year, My Man Godfrey stars Carole Lombard as Irene—a flaky socialite locked in perpetual battle with her haughty older sister—and William Powell as the titular Godfrey—the down-and-out blue blood Irene impulsively enlists as a butler and shortly falls for. Meanwhile she, her sister and their mother spend money competitively as though profligacy was a virtue, bringing the astringent patriarch Alexander (Eugene Pallette) to the brink of insolvency/insanity and endangering everyone's jolly time until Godfrey's miraculous intervention signals…

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  Review by Justin Peterson ★★★

  Criterion Collection Spine #114

  There is much more to this forgotten man than they ever imagined.

  "The only difference between a derelict and a man is a job."

  I get the satire targeted at the wealthy that My Man Godfrey dishes out, but I had the hardest time getting invested in the story. The basic premise is two sisters find a homeless man living at the dump, and they bring him back to a party to be an item they found on their scavenger hunt. The sister Godfrey agrees to help makes him her families' new butler, and instantly falls in love with him. Then Godfrey comes to see he is way more put together than this mess of a…

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  Review by Will Sloan

  Delightful! I'm already hootin' and hollerin' whenever beloved froggy-voiced character actor Eugene Pallette shows up, but when we also get to see Franklin Pangborn and The Bank Dick's Grady Sutton? I've died and gone to heaven!

  This is hardly a lost communist manifesto or anything but I do wish a Hollywood movie nowadays could be even half this class conscious.

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  Review by Anna Imhof 🌸 ★★★★½ 16

  "I don't mind dying if other people don't".

  Over the course of 90 minutes, I went from "Oh my God, this is annoying" to "Hm, I guess it has its moments" to "It's kinda good, isn't it, Anna?" to "Holy moly, this is fantastic". And now I'm completely in love with it, so much so that I wonder why I didn't take to it right away. I love stories about eccentric families. My Man Godfrey is just totally nutty and wild.