I love this movie so much

Just what I expected

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Audiences may not know what to make of Sylvia Scarlett, with its gender-bending theme and its tinge of Sapphic love (Katharine Hepburn shares two kisses with other women in this picture). But it really is much more. The film has a unique identity, full of spirit and fun. That in and of itself makes it worthwhile. Could director George Cukor and his cast possibly make any money for the studio with this picture? Probably not. Though it's as if they are unconcerned with financial considerations and just let their work run the gamut and roam wild and free. I think that makes it a selfless work of art. It is not trying to hoodwink us into being a customer. It is just being itself and letting us follow along for the ride. Of course, Hepburn's role is definitely a character study in transgender states of mind. Sylvia/Sylvester deals with some identity issues and anguishes about it, but it stays light and not too gloomy. In other films, Hepburn plays tougher, more masculine roles. But here, she's just the right combination of masculine-feminine.

Meandering curio about an embezzler (Edmund Gwenn) and his daughter (Katharine Hepburn) posing as his son as they flee from the police. Along the way they join up with con man Cary Grant. Director George Cukor gives us a real weird one here. Unfortunately its weirdness doesn't overcome its many flaws: hole-ridden script, weak direction, and poor acting. Especially the acting from Hepburn. P.U. she stunk! The more I see of early Katharine Hepburn movies the more surprised I am she ever got anywhere. She was terrible in this. Gwenn wasn't much better. With this director and cast, this really should have been a better film. Obviously, Hepburn and Grant fans should (and will) try it out. Anybody else I would say go watch "The Major and the Minor" instead.

"Sylvia Scarlett" is like a screwball comedy that can't commit to being a screwball comedy.Hepburn spends much of the first part of the film disguised as a boy so that she and her father (Edmund Gwenn), who are on the lam because of Gwenn's gambling debts, will be less conspicuous. They meet up with a Cockney shyster played by Cary Grant, who falls for Hepburn once he realizes she's actually a girl. Brian Aherne, playing a handsome gentleman the three come across during their travels, falls for her too. The finale involves a zany chase in which Hepburn and Aherne take off after Grant and Aherne's girlfriend in an attempt to get them back, only to discover once they've set off that they really like each other and don't much care about finding the disloyal lovers.The fact that the film takes on gender issues at ALL makes it a curio worthy of interest, but just WHAT the film wants to do with those gender issues is never clear. Hepburn plays the character like a tomboy who's uncomfortable in her feminine skin, which is completely at odds with the girly girl she portrays in the film's very first scene. The film is never especially funny, but its overall tone is too lighthearted for the dramatic moments to make much of an impact. The editing is ragged and jumpy, which makes me wonder if the studio did some injudicious hacking, leaving elements that that would have made the film make more sense on the cutting room floor.Critics and audiences have largely dismissed this film with an indifferent shrug, and I can't say that I blame them.Grade: C

George Cukor must have had lots of fun directing Katherine Hepburn,(Sylvia Scarlett) and Cary Grant, (Jimmy Monkley) in this comedy about Sylvia Scarlett making believe she was a boy with her hair cut very short and her father, Edmund Gwenn, (Henry Scarlett). Henry and Sylvia were forced to leave London, England because Henry had stolen a large sum of money from a firm he had worked at and so father and daughter decided to become con-artists and steal and rob people. However, every time Sylvia tried to pull off a heist, she would goof up and ruin the entire plan. Jimmy Monkley joins the team and does not realize that Sylvia is not a boy and this group of crooks get themselves into all kinds of problems with plenty of laughter. Great Classic 1936 film.