JohnHowardReid Despite its splendid first and second acts, "The Good Fairy" comes to grief when the Herbert Marshall character wantonly decides to shave off his beard. As a previous commentator has remarked, Marshall looked much, much better and was far more impressive with it on. What's more, the movie itself seemed to move faster and with more agility, plus a lot more fun! In fact, almost the whole of the Third Act could be jettisoned. It's just a waste of time. The dialogue is both so repetitive and unfunny, even the actors look uncomfortable – even Marshall himself, would you believe? Once he reverts to Mr. Clean- Shaven, he's just plain, wearisomely dull. The lovely Margaret Sullavan tries hard to spark her character up a bit, but even she is no match for a script that about two-thirds through is suddenly over-burdened with too much dull dialogue and wearisomely fleshed out with boring, slow-moving, repetitive and unessential scenes. Available on an excellent Kino Video DVD.

utgard14 Pleasant, if somewhat disappointing, romantic comedy written by Preston Sturges and directed by William Wyler. Both men did much better work than this. That isn't to say this is bad, because no movie with this level of talent involved could ever be bad. It's just not as good as one would hope. For starters, it's not very funny. I watched it with a friend and fellow classic film fan and she called it "screwball comedy, light on the comedy." That seems about right. It's certainly a wacky enough movie with a plot you would expect from Sturges -- naive young woman fresh out of an orphanage tries to help a struggling lawyer and winds up falling for him while another old guy tries to get in her pants.Margaret Sullavan stars as the young woman and she's easy to like and root for, although her character's childlike naiveté begins to oog you out near the end when you see her break down in tears over the whole mess she started, and you suddenly realize this movie's plot is basically a love story between a minor and a guy in his 40s. But it's best not to look at these things through a modern lens if one can help it. Anyway, Sullavan does fine, as does Herbert Marshall as the lawyer. The two scene stealers, though, are Frank Morgan and Reginald Denny. Morgan has a funny line about a wizard that might give you a chuckle, foreshadowing his most famous role four years later. The best part of the film to me, and the part that most directly screams Sturges, is the movie-within-a-movie that stars Gavin Gordon ("Go."). You have to see it to get why it's so funny but it's really more in line with what I hoped the rest of the movie would be. Instead the movie is a decent romcom with a great cast and a so-so script. It starts out strong but bogs down in the middle and seems to take forever to finish, despite not being particularly long. Worth a look for fans of any of the names involved but keep expectations reasonable.

JLRMovieReviews Fade in: we see an orphanage of kids, all cute and adorable and we see Margaret Sullavan in the middle of them, entertaining them with her animated tall tales, and her acting ever the child herself in telling them, even though she must be seventeen or eighteen. Alan Hale wants an new usherette at his movie house, but doesn't want the fast types who go after the boys, so he and his wife get the idea, maybe a young girl from this orphanage, who's sweet, naive, and doesn't know anything about well, anything, will do. He of course picks out Miss Sullavan. She sets out in the world with one mission: to do good deeds and to do them wholeheartedly and with a smile. With that attitude, she could get in a lot of trouble. But she knows enough to stay away from a wolf who tries to come on to her, after leaving work, played by Cesar Romero; he was too good looking! She takes up with Reginald Owen, who has a "safe and nice" face. Ultimately, for fun, I think, he tells her to go a party, but there she meets Frank Morgan, before he was "The Wizard of Oz," who gets ideas with her around. He wants to do nice things for her, but when she blurts out she's married, to keep him away from her, things get complicated and a little sticky. Enter Herbert Marshall. And, you better watch this feel-good "The Good Fairy" in order to learn two important lessons: Watch out for those good deeds; they may snowball. And, from the smallest things we do, comes the best gifts, sometimes even for ourselves.

Geoffrey Parfitt I'm a fan of Preston Sturges, and I was brought to this movie by his screenplay credit, not knowing if that would be enough to make this a movie I was going to enjoy. GOOD NEWS! This movie is a real joy from start to finish.From the outset the humour was quite subtle, and the sophisticated dialogue sounded very modern. Clearly, although this Sturges script isn't served by Sturges direction, this is still a Preston Sturges movie. And the script is backed up by sympathetic direction from William Wyler and the performances of the lead players. In particular Margaret Sullavan is fresh and funny as the fish-out-of-water naive young girl leaving her orphanage to join the outside world, determined to do a good deed every day... to be a Good Fairy to somebody.Unfortunately the lies she feels she has to tell, and the resulting problems she's willing to face, lead her into digging a deeper and deeper hole for herself, and into dragging other characters into the hole with her. Those other characters are the Sturges eccentrics we know from his acclaimed movies of later years. The scenes with Frank Morgan and Reginald Owen shouting at each other with Sullavan between them are fabulous. Herbert Marshall is also good, but he or his character can not match the same level of lunacy.Now I've seen this, I just hope it won't be long before I can get to see "Easy Living", the next comedy that Preston Sturges was able to write and exert the same level of influence over.