The Perfect Snob (1941)

Fresh and Exciting

As Good As It Gets

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Charles Ruggles (Dr Mason) is a vet whose passion for dogs is a bit weird. He fills his house with recovering animals and they find themselves into the marital bed that he shares with his wife Charlotte Greenwood (Martha). Not surprisingly, Greenwood finds this a nuisance. Which it is. She takes her daughter Lynn Bari (Chris) on a trip to Honolulu so that she can marry her off to a wealthy man and set her up for life. Ruggles has plans that are outside this snobbery and joins them where he hires Cornel Wilde (Mike) to pose as a playboy to sabotage Greenwood's plans. However, Wilde is also a wealthy playboy after all.......The film has some occasionally funny moments, mostly provided by Cornel Wilde as he wrecks the chances of Bari's potential suitor Alan Mowbray (Freddie). Charlotte Greenwood is also occasionally funny but the film is ultimately let down by Lynn Bari. She has no redeeming features - she's just awful throughout making it impossible to sympathize for her or support her in any of her decisions. The ending where she suddenly falls for Wilde comes like a bolt out of heaven. Where on earth did that come from? She can't stand him throughout the film. There has never been any dialogue between these 2 characters to indicate she has any romantic feelings towards him. There is also an awkwardly contrived plot involving Wilde and Anthony Quinn (Moreno) as they chase after the affections of Bari. It's made into a further nonsense by Bari herself who is so completely undesirable. She's not good looking and she has a nasty personality. No-one would bother. If the truth be told, the film ain't that good.

Martha Mason, the mother of Chris Mason, a young college graduate, wants the best for her daughter. Martha is a woman who is dazzled for the kind of life she can't have. That's why she decides to interest her daughter in an aging society bore, Freddy Browning, thinking he will be her girl's ticket for the high life. Like all ambitious mothers, she has invented a fictitious persona for herself and her husband Edgar, a veterinarian, who she passes to Freddy as a psychiatrist!Edgar follows his family into Honolulu, at the spurt of the moment. He wants to engage a young man, Mike Lord, whom he meets one day at a pier, to impersonate a rich playboy and steal Chris away from Freddy. Little does Edgar know that Mike Lord is in reality a rich man with extensive holdings in the islands. Thus the fun and games begin."The Perfect Snob" is a delightful Twentieth Century 1941 film, directed by Ray McCarey, with good pacing. The cast is the main excuse to see the picture. Charles Ruggles and Charlotte Greenwood, were an inspired choice to play the older Masons. Lynn Bari and Cornel Wilde, are Chris and Mike, destined to love one another. Anthony Quinn has a small role as Mike's friend. Allan Mowbray is seen as the befuddled Freddy.Watch it next time it shows on cable.