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Dinner at Eight Movie Review

Dinner at Eight is a 1933 Pre-Code dramedy film directed by George Cukor and starring an ensemble cast consisting of Marie Dressler, John and Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery and Jean Harlow. It is a frustratingly uneven picture.

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“I never could understand why it has to be just even, male and female.

They’re invited for dinner, not for mating“

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A high-society dinner party hosted by Millicent and Oliver Jordan masks a hotbed of scandal and intrigue. First of all, that scandal as described in the premise of the movie is very mild by today’s standards. They do end up fighting and uncovering some secrets, but they are bound not to shock anybody watching it in the 21^st century.

For a famous comedy, I’d expected a much funnier outcome. There are some funny scenes to be had here for sure, but the majority of the film plays out like a lightweight drama. It is a dramedy basically. But that’s not my main issue with this movie. Its biggest downfall was the structure.

The entire first half (perhaps even more than that) is about the guests preparing for dinner. Only the final third or so features the actual dinner. That was a very poor choice that hindered the film’s impact significantly. Had they gathered the actors and the characters that they play sooner, the movie would have turned out much livelier and funnier.

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Dinner at Eight is ‘Grand Hotel’ 2.0. That is the best way to describe it. MGM put together this incredible ensemble cast consisting of some of their best actors along with others borrowed from different studios. The result is an epic exercise in who’s who and a battle at who will win that ended in a surprising outcome.

The ladies by far outmatched the gentlemen here. Lee Tracy and Edmund Lowe are solid themselves while Lionel Barrymore is also quite good as he always was. The standouts are typecast Wallace Beery with very funny angry outbursts at his wife and John Barrymore who pretty much played himself as he would later also deal with career downfall. Larry is a pathetic character and the movie made him too tragic, but the actor excelled playing him.

Among the ladies, Billie Burke is pretty good, but Harlow and Dressler are the absolute standouts of the entire movie. I adore Marie Dressler and she was fantastic here as usual. Her speech near the end was very interesting and risqué for its time and the opening with her flirtatious behavior was quite amusing. But it is actually Jean Harlow who stole the show, even from the great Dressler herself. Her performance as Kitty is one full of charisma, emotional intensity and liveliness. She is very memorable and a scene-stealer throughout. It’s a shame that she would die so early as she could have had an amazing career.

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Dinner at Eight is one of George Cukor’s more uneven efforts. His directing here basically consisted of him coaching his actors to give the best performances possible and he excelled at that, but there is little visual or artistic flair to be found here. The cinematography, production design and the overall look of the movie are all rather pedestrian. The production felt too stagy. The pacing is also awkward. It’s a shame because it had a lot of potential to be a great comedy, but that potential was only fulfilled in the very end.