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13 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
It's another "Front Page"!, 14 February 1999
9/10
Author: Varlaam from Toronto, Canada

Not in plot. In style where it counts. The dialogue comes really thick and fast. Pat O'Brien plays smooth Hildy Johnson again, only this time he's called J. Carlyle Benson, screenwriter. He runs rings around Ralph Bellamy who is bemusedly befuddled once more, as he was about to be shortly in "His Girl Friday", the remake of "The Front Page". "Boy Meets Girl" can hold its head up high in the company of either of those films. There are crazy laughs and movie industry in-jokes aplenty.

There's a swipe at Canadians! There's a swipe at Mark Hellinger!! There's a swipe at Marcel Proust!!! "Lui-même!" as pretentious droppers of French phrases like Ralph Bellamy would say.

Pat O'Brien does a pratfall! In the part of conniving Walter Burns, you've got Jimmy Cagney who naturally has no trouble keeping up with Pat. Jimmy's real-life buddy Frank McHugh plays their nemesis, Rossetti, the agent.

There are good, well-written parts here even for minor characters like those played by Marie Wilson and Bruce Lester.

Because the movie is littered with gags of all kinds, I just assume that the "errors" I see are only more in-jokes. Two characters discuss Errol Flynn and agree that he really is English. Wrong! We know he's actually Australian. But it's just another joke, in disguise. Doubly ironic is the fact that the English character in the scene is played by a South African. There's a joke about exactly this sort of thing in a different scene! Art imitates life imitating art imitating life. Or something. A cowboy movie gets produced during the course of the film. It's called "Golden Nuggets" on the poster, then "Golden Nugget" a minute later in the movie trailer. A mistake? Or just another swipe, this time at more typical slipshod Hollywood productions?

A film by and about screenwriters making fun of themselves, and everyone else while they're at it. A really funny, fast-moving story and a tangled plot. An ironic title. This is no simple "boy meets girl" movie.

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10 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Good Actors, Stupid Roles, 2 August 2007
3/10
Author: ccthemovieman-1 from Lockport, NY, United States

James Cagney and Pat O'Brien: wow, there is a pair of talented Irishmen! Cagney is my all- time favorite actor and O'Brien is either excellent or annoying, depending on the role. In this both, to be honest, both of these guys look, sound and act stupid. Here is another "screwball comedy" that doesn't work, despite those two fabulous leading men. These guys look out of place in this film. It doesn't help that the dialog in here is just awful.

It's a fast-paced film, and I have no problems with that although it is a bit frantic at times. I just didn't like the main characters - "Robert Law" (Cagney) and "J.C. Benson" (O'Brien) - and thought the movie was dumb. And, yes, it's very dated and looks even dumber. Where are the laughs?

I understand this story was quite a successful play, so they must have screwed this up in the screen writing. Speaking of that, this story is a spoof about screenwriters who under pressure to come with a story for a has-been cowboy star. It's more of that than it is a "boy-meets- girl" story as the title implies, although Marie Wilson plays the female catch. This ditzy blonde wouldn't be a "catch" for me, not with that brutal voice of hers that grated on me like chalk on a blackboard. I liked her name in this movie: "Susie Seabrook." That was all I liked.

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Don't bite the hand that feeds you!, 17 May 2006
10/10
Author: eva25at from Vienna, Austria

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

BOY MEETS GIRL is the classic tale of two snooty authors from the East Coast (James Cagney and Pat O'Brien) who were lured to Hollywood by filthy lucre and snub everybody in sight - especially the bumptious cowboy-star for whom they write (Dick Foran).

The film begins when Foran, whose contract is about to expire, realizes that he needs a hit. His agent urges him to beseech the pampered script doctors. Cagney ("I nearly won the Pulitzer prize, now I write dialog for a horse") is not impressed with Foran's bragging ("I have many fans who would write me if they could write") but O'Brien's beautiful wife has a weakness for mink coats...

Studio head Ralph Bellamy ("I'm the only university graduate here. I'm a linguist") tries to arbitrate. His wholesome meals, his masseur and his literature (Proust) keep him busy but he finds time to remind his scriptwriters that they make more money than the U.S. President.

The fainting-fit of a good-natured but slightly pregnant waitress (Marie Wilson) kindles Cagney's and O'Brien's creative urge and they hatch a story about Foran finding an exposed baby on his threshold in the Rocky Mountains...The big star is not amused but his partnership with a little star who grows up publicly (like Jim Carrey in "The Truman Show") secures him a long-term contract. Cagney quickly obtains Wilson's authority.

Wilson is wise enough to appreciate the godsend ("I have a house, a car, a chauffeur") but Foran isn't: He gives himself airs, refuses to bathe the baby ("that's unmanly!"), complains that he has to work longer than the baby...His agent advises him to marry Wilson and wrench the authority for the baby from Cagney's and O'Brien's hands. But the resourceful duo decides to put him out of the running and hires a "father" from the casting agency (Cagney: "Send me a good-looking extra, a gentleman..."). When they stumble about a charming Errol-Flynn-lookalike - who made already eyes at Wilson - they drum the line "Why did you leave me? I'm Happy's father" into his head and prompt him to deliver it on opening-night. (The scene where radio-announcer Ronald Reagan fights a hard battle against the young mother who is determined to tell everything baby did to the last detail is hilarious).

Bellamy is furious since baby's illegitimacy sullies the studio's reputation. Even an elaborate disguise cannot help Cagney from becoming his prime suspect. Bellamy seizes the opportunity to peach on his former protégées and give them the air. They are soon joined by baby (who contracted the measles) and Foran (who caught them too).

As much as the authors play down their misfortune - being fired from the very studio they despise rankles in their mind. Will Cagney end as a recluse in a mountain lodge in Vermont? Will O'Brien's wife come back to him? (Cagney: "Do you want her back?". O'Brien: "Yes. Why not?"). And there is still Foran who believes: "I'm a capital investment!".

How enjoyable to see James Cagney and Pat O'Brien in a film that does NOT end with O'Brien saying his prayers at Cagney's deathbed. (I counted three!). This comedy was Cagney's first Warner film after a two-year vacation at poverty row. But his act of defiance paid: Jack Warner gave him better roles and a higher salary. Soon he was Hollywood's best-paid actor...The two high-browed but mischievous authors were of course modeled on Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, but Samuel and Bella Spewack did not miss the opportunity to perpetuate their own memory. Curios that they wrote this farce at all since I-hate-Hollywood-stories come usually from those who were refused admittance to the club and these authors were very successful...The film is even more irreverent than SUNSET BLVD. Not only superannuated actors were profaned but obtuse producers - risky. And an illegitimate child was a novelty in censor-bullied Hollywood (Wilson's performance tempers the blow: She looks as if she does not know where babies come from ). Cagney's and O'Brien's performance is so spirited that they consign the script's weaknesses to oblivion. A real pleasure to see these fine actors at their rollicking best.

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Is This How Pictures Were Made?, 31 July 2006
8/10
Author: bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York

James Cagney and Pat O'Brien made their second of two films adapted from Broadway plays, the first being Ceiling Zero. Boy Meets Girl, written by the husband and wife team of Samuel and Bella Spewack ran for 664 performances and was directed on Broadway by the great George Abbott.

It would have been nice had Warner Brothers secured the services of Mr. Abbott to direct this film version. But even without his touch Boy Meets Girl nicely adapts from the stage to the screen. The parts of Benson and Law, based loosely on the writing team of Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht, fit Cagney and O'Brien very well indeed.

I've always been of the opinion though it is the strong performances of the supporting cast that make this film. Dick Foran showed what a really good sport he was in satirizing himself essentially. At the time Boy Meets Girl was made, Foran was Warner Brothers B picture singing cowboy star. A whole lot of other players would never have done what Foran did. Too bad they didn't give him a song to sing in this though.

But the performance I really like is that of Ralph Bellamy, the harassed studio executive who is being driven to his wit's end by the antics of Cagney and O'Brien. Forget The Awful Truth, His Girl Friday, or even Sunrise at Campobello, this to me is Ralph Bellamy's career role. What makes it work is that Bellamy does play it so seriously against Cagney and O'Brien.

Frank McHugh, Marie Wilson, and Bruce Lester are involved in this also. And very prominently featured is the 40th President of the United States in one of the first roles that brought him some attention as a radio announcer. Since that's what Ronald Reagan was before coming to Hollywood, no strain here on any acting ability. Still he has some good moments as Cagney hatches a plot that does disrupt his broadcast.

Do you ever think Ralph Bellamy finally did cure all the problems that 'Young England' was facing?

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Gets Girl..., 4 August 2006
9/10
Author: theowinthrop from United States

That is the philosophy of J. Carlyle Benson (Pat O'Brien), fast talking screen writing hack at Monumental Pictures, a Hollywood dream creating factory run by C. Elliott Friday (Ralph Bellamy). Benson constantly insists that is the simple formula for every film script he and his partner Robert Law (James Cagney) do at Monumental. It must work because they are more than tolerated by the pretentious, "intellectual" Friday, who spends most of his time trying to salvage a movie set in Britain (at one point making the grandiloquent comment, "I'm trying to save "Young England"!"). Friday's intellectual triteness is easily shown - he so misunderstands just what a "trumpet" is, that he ends up making his sentinels blow some preposterous looking trombone while wearing beefeater costumes.

Pat O'Brien and James Cagney formed one of the most legendary friendships in Hollywood history, lasting from the 1930s until the 1980s. It was the backbone of what was called the "Irish Mafia" (O'Brien, Cagney, Spencer Tracy, Frank McHugh, Lynn Overman). They co-starred in many films, most notably ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES, TORRID ZONE, THE FIGHTING 69TH, and this, their only real comedy together (the other films have comic moments, but are basically dramatic). BOY MEETS GIRL was a farce about Hollywood film making by Samuel and Bella Spivak, that was a Broadway hit. It translate well to the screen, as it follows the antics of O'Brien and Cagney as frustrated writers turned into meaningless hacks. In fact, despite the financial benefits for surrendering their talents, it takes a toll on the men. Cagney feels disgusted at the loss of his real writing talent (he almost got the Pulitzer Prize). O'Brien finds his marriage suffering due to his feelings, and his wife eventually walks out on him.

So they take their revenge on several targets, most notably Mr. Friday, but also the Dick Foran, a popular cowboy star at the lot, and his obnoxious agent Frank McHugh (one of the few McHugh - Cagney films where McHugh is not a close friend of Cagney's). Then they meet an employee of the studio (Marie Wilson), who has a baby but no living husband. Wilson's baby is quite adorable, so Benson and Law create a series of films involving the baby in the old west, and so force Foran into a co-starring position that he resents. Lest you think this is extreme, the 1930s saw many film series in which children or babies dominate. Shirley Temple is the best known example, but Jane Withers was the central figure in several movies, as was young Jackie Cooper, and even the Dionne Quintuplets. Further, there was a silent film called "Three Godfathers" that John Ford directed (he would later remake it with John Wayne, Harry Carey Jr., and Pedro Armendariz), in which the western heroes give their all for a baby that is left with them.

The speed of the farce is matched by the delivery of lines by both it's Irish-American stars. O'Brien had learned to deliver lines snappily early on, and his speed is infectious on Cagney. But they can slow down for effect, especially as they give capsule descriptions of their gooey plots (at one moment, Cagney reveals the obvious point - when badman Foran is about to hide his loot from a robbery, he looks down at the place he chose, and "What do you think he finds? A Baabee!" dramatizes Jimmy). He also tries to make up dialog to explain the missing father of the baby, by suggesting that he may not have died on the Morro Castle (burned in 1934).

If the situation seems somewhat more dated today because screen writing is recognize (when well done) as the equivalent of a good novel, short story, essay, or play, the movie's gusto and humor still work quite well. So while not a film meriting a "10" it still gets a "9".

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Description, 17 March 2009
10/10
Author: Douglas Gordon from United States

Once a staple of summer stock and community theaters, Bella and Samuel Spewack's Broadway farce Boy Meets Girl dates rather badly when seen today. The 1938 movie version is also a bit mildewed, though it is saved by the dynamo-like energy of James Cagney and Pat O'Brien. The stars are cast as Robert Law and J.C. Benson, a pair of iconoclastic Hollywood screenwriters based upon Ben Hecht and Charlie McArthur. Cynically declaring that every film can be boiled down to "Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl", Law and Benson drive their studio-executive bosses crazy with their zany irreverence. Their pet target is bigwig C. Elliot Friday (Ralph Bellamy), a delicious take-off of 20th Century-Fox proxy Darryl F. Zanuck. Friday orders the boys to concoct a screenplay for cowboy star Larry Toms (Dick Foran), whose popularity is on the wane. Upon making the acquaintance of pregnant, unmarried waitress Susie (Marie Wilson), Law and Benson hit upon a brilliant scheme: they'll transform Susie's baby into a child star and team the kid with Toms in his latest epic ("based on an original story by William Shakespeare"). Complication piles upon complication, reaching a high point of hilarity when the baby gives Larry Toms the measles. Ronald Reagan appears briefly as a radio announcer covering the Hollywood premiere of Law and Bensen's newest masterpiece. Boy Meets Girl was originally conceived as a Marion Davies vehicle, with the comedy team of Olsen & Johnson playing the screenwriters, but things changed radically (and for the better) when Davies' sponsor William Randolph Hearst huffily pulled his Cosmopolitan Pictures unit off the Warner Bros. lot.

Anyone interested in obtaining a copy of this film just write to me at: iamaseal2@yahoo.com

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2 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
It's like watching a group of hyperactive chihuahuas on Speed!, 10 January 2007
4/10
Author: planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida

I love "screwball comedies" from the 1930s and 40s. Such films as ARSENIC AND OLD LACE and BRINGING UP BABY and HIS GIRL Friday are wonderful films--with a wonderfully breezy pace, high energy and lots of laughs. BOY MEETS GIRL is an attempt to do this same sort of comedy, though the laughs just aren't that noticeable and the film is too darn frenetic to be enjoyed. I am serious when I say that this film was even more fast-paced and hyper than ONE, TWO, THREE and ARSENIC AND OLD LACE. Because of this, I really found the film to be, at times, truly annoying--particularly the characters played by Cagney and O'Brien. They were NOT particularly likable, well-developed or easy to follow! In many ways, it was like having an average actor pretend to be a Marx Brother from one of their REALLY hyper early films--like HORSEFEATHERS. The problem is, it worked for the Marxes--but not here. A frantic pace alone does not make a movie--a decent script and good characters need to be in place as well.

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3 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Good cast and characters, 27 December 2000
7/10
Author: jann-6

I didn't find this to be a hilarious comedy, but it's entertaining and has some good performances. Cagney of course is excellent, and Marie Wilson is particularly charming as the naive mother of Happy, Hollywood's newborn sensation. The dialogue is extremely fast (for a challenge, try keeping up with it with your closed-captioning on.) The plot is perhaps a bit silly by today's standards, but good performances make this a worthwhile film. Look out for "in-jokes" about the movie industry, a future American president in a small role, and a lot of trumpets (or are they trombones?) Personally this film never made me laugh out loud, but it made me smile a lot.

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1 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
FRANTIC SWING... and a miss., 1 February 2008
3/10
Author: jbacks3 from United States

This is easily the 3rd worst Cagney movie of the 1930's (I'll leave it to you to decide whether GREAT GUY or SOMETHING TO SING ABOUT is #1, but the latter single-handedly sunk Grand National). The problem here isn't the performers--- Cagney is my all-time favorite actor--- but the script. The Broadway-anchored Spewacks just do a rotten attempt at replicating the energy of THE FRONT PAGE, likely reminded of Pat O'Brien being in that gem some 7 years earlier. Buddies Cagney & O'Brien obviously enjoyed the rapid-fire dialog but here, it's just too much that goes nowhere. Ralph Bellamy is a $50,000 year idiot producer and Dick Foran plays an oater star concerned about the direction of his nominal career. The picture doesn't generate laughs and is chock full of inside Warner cracks ("they broke the Vita-Glass!"--- okay, that was amusing I'll admit) and blatant name-dropping of lots of stars--- all Warner contractees. The main interest is the stellar cast that performs far beyond the call of duty: Penny Singleton does a bit as a manicurist, Marie Wilson co-stars as a dumb commissary employee who's preggers--- with questionable marital status (odd for a film made during the Hays Code) and a voice that could peel paint. In the highlight of the movie, a 27-year old Ronald Reagan appears in a well played bit as an announcer doing a remote at a film premier who cuts Wilson off a nanosecond before the Production Code would've kicked in. Also look for curvy Carol Landis in an uncredited role as a cashier. There's enough fodder for a movie nut but a casual viewer would find the movie a waste of DVR space. I found myself thinking about Cagney & O'Brien all appearing in RAGTIME 43 years later and the amazing never-got-the-girl career Bellamy had right up until he died in 1991. Note: I think the IMDb link to the alleged "Baby Happy" actor is wrong. The actor's birth date is listed as 1927 and this '38 release has an actual infant in it.

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0 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Poor, 12 March 2008
Author: Michael_Elliott from Louisville, KY

Boy Meets Girl (1938)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Extremely poor and unfunny spoof of Hollywood has two screenwriters (James Cagney/Pat O'Brien) coming up with a scheme to make their next film a hit. There's a lot of fast talking and some slapstick but I can't help but feel this should have been a film with The Marx Brothers instead. Cagney and O'Brien make a great team in dramas but their comedy act here just doesn't work and it comes off quite forced. The laughs are pushed so hard that it becomes rather annoying very quickly. Ralph Bellamy co-stars in this semi-redo of The Front Page. To date, this is the worst Cagney film I've seen.

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