Save your money for something good and enjoyable

I wanted to but couldn't!

Don't listen to the negative reviews

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It's interesting that this is generally considered a comedy, but it has a really hard edge. There is suicide, greed, bankruptcy and infighting. Granted, there are numerous funny lines, including one famous one about the world's oldest profession. Carole Lombard plays the selfish blonde bombshell who is in the middle of everything. The figure that is far and away the most interesting is Marie Dressler. She was always cast as the matronly character with a with control over situations. I remember her connection to another figure in this movie, Wallace Beery, the hard drinking, in sensitive boorish blowhard. They were together in "Min and Bill" and formed a combative couple that will be remembered for all of filmdom. The interesting thing is that she was a woman who usually got her way.

DINNER AT EIGHT is a serious comedy drama. Hard for me to choose another description. The film shows a set of relationships in people's lives. Given the circumstances of such relationships can be real. Usually the tragicomic.The essence is incorporated in two segments. The existential and emotional. They are very close no matter how separated them. From a different perspective, this thesis would be proved correct. This movie is worth a look. Relationships are intertwined in a tragicomic story. Comedy and tragedy alternate in such continuity that the viewer realizes that nothing other than mild collapse will not happen. The collapse did not begin or end, it is the continuation of what is already known. With her existentially and emotionally evolved and continues.The acting is pretty good. Marie Dressler (Carlotta Vance)was very good. It is a kind of link in the story. Lionel and John Barrymore (Oliver Jordan & Larry Renoult) can not be bad. They just good actors. Berry and Harlow (Dan and Kitty Packard) are incredibly entertaining. Dan acting stupidly next to Kitty. Kitty is the contemplation digger and probably naked under her dress. Billie Burke (Millicent Jordan) is in a good part of the film quite tiring.In this film, the concept is clearly outclassed. Comedy and tragedy go in pairs. In this film, people should recognize. Humor, which predominates, is enveloped in one deceptive veil of inevitable tragedy that surrounds life. Honestly, I'm not thrilled as much as I thought I would be.

I think it would be a mistake to reveal much about the story of this film, so I will deal only with it merits.David O. Selznick set out to create another of his quality productions with "Dinner at Eight", starring an all-star cast.Billie Burke, with her lilting voice, plays Millicent, the wife of a shipping business owner. She is self-consumed and intent on creating a perfect dinner party.Lionel Barrymore plays Oliver Jordan, her husband and a man with several problems on his hands. Madge Evans plays Paula, their daughter who is engaged to a young, attractive man who is cut from very regular cloth. She is involved with another man--one who offers a more exotic and challenging relationship.Wallace Beery plays Dan Packard, a coarse and aggressive businessman who is invited to the dinner at Oliver's request. His wife Kitty is played by Jean Harlow. She's a platinum-plated gold digger whose relationship with Dan is similar to that between Billie and Harry in "Born Yesterday".Edmund Lowe plays Dr. Talbot, a "masher" who treats several characters.Marie Dressler plays Carlotta Vance, a retired actress who flaunts a lifestyle she cannot sustain. Ms. Dressler often plays the matronly socialite for laughs; here she is a fully-developed character who is allowed to show her real acting talent.John Barrymore plays Larry Renault, an actor who is on the down-side of a career onstage and in film. His is one of the bravest portrayals I have ever seen, as his character's personality and situation are written so close to his own.The main strength of this film is the story, which allows each character to be developed, giving emotional depth to the story. It is well worth seeing.

The classic 1933 setup could not be grander. George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber wrote a Broadway depression drama, here translated into a black and white film centering on the lives of the people invited to a formal dinner which the wife isn't capable of pulling off, and for which the husband doesn't exactly have enthusiasm. The one liners about the old rich losing everything in the depression, to believe all is over, are magnificent. The film is a milestone in the number of high paying stars the producer was willing to hire in the early days of the talkies -John and Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Billie Burke and Marie Dressler. While everything clicked gloriously during the premiere year, 1933, the millennium finds both the photography and the editing VERY dated and more the sense of the major characters developing their backstories and depression dilemmas as sequential short plays, one after the other having nothing to do with each other, than a storyline per se. It seems more like watching a series of fabulous old clips featuring this or that famous star in this or that realistic loss of self and wealth situation, but not anything which the modern audience might suggest approaches "a play with a story".