Let's Live a Little (1948)

Great Film overall

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This movie features some amazing Actors. All three of the principle Actors are about ten to fifteen years past their "glory days".They are mired in a terrible plot that no amount of technical skills, or personal charisma can overcome.This is basically a second rate B movie with an A level cast.Hedy Lamarr plays a female Doctor. In order for a woman to become a Doctor in the 1940s, she had to be far more that just intelligent. She had to have an incredible focus and a commitment to her career. The horribly patronizing script expects us to believe that Larmarr's character would be willing to throw it all away because a moment with Robert Cummings could turn her into a quivering pile of jelly.Robert Cumming's character is written as one of the strangest "Leading Man" types I have ever seen in any classic movie. He is fussy, prissy, highly emotional, and totally lacking in testosterone. The script calls for Cummings to act like a "confirmed bachelor" type of character. He is asked to pull off the type of performance Franklin Pangborn did so much more successfully.Worst of all is how the script treats Anna Sten. This is one of the last movies Sten ever made. Sten was one of the most beautiful women to ever appear in a Classic Movie. The lighting and camera angles are deliberately unsympathetic to an older woman. Despite what you might read, this is not a comedy. There is a lot of fussing and a lot of busy work, but don't confuse this with humor.

Let's just cut to the chase here..."Let's Live a Little" is a terrible film with little to recommend it. The writing is particularly bad and it's about the worst film either Hedy Lamarr or Bob Cummings appeared in during their careers.When the film begins, Duke Crawford (Cummings) is an extremely harried advertising man. He works all the time and is so busy, he's begun sounding like he's coming unhinged. And, when his latest client is a psychiatrist, she (Lamarr) is also worried he's losing his mind. He thinks they are dating...she thinks he's her latest patient..and the hilarity ensues...or should have.The humor is very forced and very unfunny. Both actors (particularly Cummings) try very hard to make bad material work...but the film just comes off as stupid and 4th rate...at best.

Whatever possessed HL to appear in this ridiculous film which panders to the worst excesses of male chauvinism prevalent in Hollywood in 1948.I fully endorse "cheeseplease's" comments.We all know HL was intelligent (co-designer of an electronic torpedo guidance system patented with a male colleague) as well as being very beautiful and I had hopes in this film she would espouse tracts of Freud/Junge and show us her innate well bred poise and intelligence.What we got, or rather what she was "saddled" with, was some airhead of a Hollywood scriptwriter & producer giving us the most facile, unfunny, badly constructed so-called "comedy" screenplay I have seen in a long while.I too found nothing to laugh at in this contrived one dimensional film.I presume that by 1948 in this "B" feature, Hedy was getting rather desperate for good scripts or needed the money.The same goes for Robert Cummings.(How mush better he was in Hitchcock's "Saboteur" (1945) with Priscilla Lane or even his "Dial M For Murder (1953)with Grace Kelly.The subject film never touched on psychiatry presumably because the screen writer and producer knew nothing about it and patronisingly considered it an unfunny subject for American audiences in 1948.That just exposes their ignorance when films like Hitchcock's "Spellbound" (1945) had been filmed.Silly irritating sequences of both leads imagining each other's faces superimposed on other peoples bodies really annoyed me.How could two rational people who had reached an elevated position in their respective careers appear so foolish?Pulling silly faces or reacting in a crass way in these sequences is certainly not funny to an intelligent audience.Why then did I purchase this DVD?Well I had hopes of seeing another good performance by HL like she played in "Come Live With Me"(1941) a witty and literate film opposite Jimmy Stewart.I rate the latter as her best film ever as her own character has verisimilitude as an Austrian refugee - albeit a very beautiful one.At least it is another rare HL film in my collection of her.Verdict - 3/10 could do better.

Even after three viewings, I still think this movie is terrible. Its a comedy, but I haven't laughed yet. Robert Cummings is miscast, and I keep wanting to slap this character as I wonder why in the world the casting director chose him (wouldn't Jimmy Stewart be much better?). Hedy as a psychiatrist is intriguing as a concept, but this script falls very short. As a consequence, she looks mostly flat, absurd and misplaced. Unlike a number of her other films, her beauty can't save this movie. Nevermind the fact that Hollywood was slack with boundaries in its portrayal of psychiatrists. I hope future viewers find enjoyable qualities in this movie.