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I’m No Angel Movie Review

I’m No Angel is a 1933 Pre-Code comedy film directed by Wesley Ruggles and starring Mae West and Cary Grant. It’s one of West’s signature movies.

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“When I’m good, I’m very good,

but when I’m bad, I’m better“

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Circus performer Tira seeks a better life pursuing the company of wealthy New York men with improbable comic complications along the way. This is Mae West’s most iconic movie along with ‘She Done Him Wrong’. Both movies are of similar quality, meaning that they’re thinly plotted excuses to feature Mae West doing her best – making us laugh. This movie was among those least affected by the Hays Code, which led to such a riotous, wonderfully provocative time.

West received sole screenplay credit here and it exemplifies her writing in a nutshell – she was not great at storytelling, but she was phenomenal at writing dialogue. The crime elements here were somewhat underwhelming, though the twists and turns were fun, and the many characters that we got to meet along the way were memorable. The film’s overall script is weak, but viewed individually, it contains so many classic scenes that worked effortlessly at both humor and dialogue.

The best sequence arrived late in the game with that courtroom sequence. This was one of the funniest courtroom scenes of all time and it was refreshing seeing comedy in a setting that is usually devoid of such a treatment. West’s playful dynamic with the judge was very funny and undeniably charming. She also handled her so competently, which made me wish to have seen a movie starring her as the detective or lawyer. She would have killed it in such a role.

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Whenever people go on about movies today having proactive, powerful heroines unlike the films of the past, you should present them with this film to counter-argue that ridiculous claim. Rare are films these days that are as feminist as these Mae West vehicles. Her Tira is a woman who literally commands the men around her. West was very much aware of men’s obsession with women’s looks, so she turned that into her biggest power, using men instead of the other way around. She gets what she wants out of them with her brain being her main strength.

I’m No Angel is to be seen for Mae West alone. As is the case with most of her movies, she is the film itself. Without her, this wouldn’t have been nearly as great. She is very charismatic, her delivery of jokes is stupendous and she got many of her most iconic lines of dialogue exactly in this picture. And she also got to sing and dance here, proving that she had that talent as well.

But the movie has a couple of standout performances from the rest of the cast. Cary Grant was surprisingly not present all that much here, but he was as charismatic and as suave as always. The two did make for a great pairing in these films. Gregory Ratoff and Edward Arnold were also quite solid and it was unexpected how Grant was just one of the supporting players here and certainly not the lead.

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I’m No Angel is well directed, very well scored and it has a couple of memorable musical numbers. The editing and pacing are terrific and the movie flies by how entertaining it is, though the second half is clearly the superior one. It’s a witty movie that stood the test of time gloriously and is so much fun to this day.