DVD Review The Magnificent Dope DVD Review (1 Viewer)

[Matt Hough]

The Magnificent Dope DVD Review

During his many years of stage and screen stardom, Henry Fonda was much better known for his dramatic performances than for his comedic ones. And yet, there are comedies in his filmography and some famous ones, too: The Male Animal, Yours, Mine, and Ours, Mister Roberts, and (supremely) The Lady Eve. Walter Lang’s The Magnificent Dope may not rank alongside Preston Sturges’ classic farce, but on its own it’s a not-bad little comedy made before Fonda entered World War II and showing him at his breeziest and most ingratiating. If things move more slowly than they should (and the movie still runs only 83-minutes), it’s time well spent watching Fonda develop the trajectory for his character from a simpleton to a man with eyes wide open.

Studio: Fox

Distributed By: N/A

Video Resolution and Encode: 480I/MPEG-2

Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Audio: English 2.0 DD

Subtitles: None

Rating: Not Rated

Run Time: 1 Hr. 23 Min.

Package Includes: DVD

Amaray case

Disc Type: DVD-R

Region: All

Release Date: 10/09/2014

MSRP: $19.98

The Production Rating: 3/5

With business looking rather grim for the Dawson Institute for Success, owner Dwight Dawson (Don Ameche) and Girl Friday Claire Harris (Lynn Bari) hit on a scheme to sponsor a contest to find the laziest man in America and then turn him into a success using the Dawson method. They find their victim, er…, winner in Tad Page (Henry Fonda), a Vermont innocent who works only the summer months renting out boats spending the rest of the year loafing about. Tad really isn’t interested in taking the Dawson curriculum, but he does fall for Claire, so in order to stay around her, he goes along with the program. But Dawson has things rigged so that Page gets a minimum of skills in return for a maximum of publicity for his agency, and with Claire completely in the dark about Tad’s feelings for her, it seems as though Tad is heading for a big broken heart before his sojourn in Manhattan comes to an end.Future Oscar-winner George Seaton developed the screenplay from Joseph Schrank’s original story. It’s all fluff and feathers, of course, with the mortgaged-to-the-hilt Dawson and Harris living in swank apartments with their own servants and providing a spending allowance for Page while he’s in New York. But the script does cast a slightly satirical eye at the tradition of “success schemes” that still today provide modern charlatans with comfortable livings with Dawson’s particular trick using a succession of hilarious Benjamin Franklin axioms to live by as their jumping off points toward the roads to success and happiness. Director Walter Lang moves things along smoothly and turns up the farce knob a touch during an extended birthday party sequence where the identity of Claire’s fiancé is being kept a secret from Tad by any means necessary. With a huge chocolate cake as the centerpiece of the party, one can guess how this celebration will climax, but it’s still a fun sequence. But the movie’s best and most special scenes involve Fonda doing his earnest young turk routine with a succession of overworked, harried businessmen calming them down and bringing them into his unique sphere of quiet, thoughtful repose. It makes his casting in the role obviously inspired since his open-faced honesty and sincerity comes across with such immediate and immense appeal.With Fonda’s casting near perfection, it’s a shame that Don Ameche drives so hard in the other direction to garner his share of attention. He’s overly loud and pushes too hard for effect (not just when he’s trying to win over people but throughout the movie even in quieter scenes, too), his polar opposite to Fonda’s Tad Page maybe a bit too obvious for comfort. Lynn Bari’s character has to be pretty dense not to see the total adoration of Tad right before her eyes throughout the entire movie, but this was a common trope in movies then (and now), and she gives an attractive performance. Edward Everett Horton is around to liven things up with his own brand of calculated chicanery, and he's always welcome. George Barbier and Hobart Cavanaugh play two businessmen in need of Tad’s special brand of relaxation while Arthur Loft plays a fire engine salesman who figures importantly in later reels of the movie.

Video Rating: 3/5 3D Rating: NA

The film has been framed at 1.33:1 (the end credits get chopped off a bit in the closing cast list). Sharpness isn’t much of a problem with the image frequently showing lots of detail and crispness though there are a couple of individual scenes that seem to have been taken from another (substandard) print. Grayscale at its best can be very striking with bright whites and rich, deep blacks, but contrast has been irregularly applied to the transfer resulting in an irregular grayscale. The film has a fair amount of dust specks and debris, and the reel change markers are all in place. There are one or two instances of telecine anomalies where the image goes wonky for a few seconds. The movie has been marked for chapter divisions every ten minutes so there are 9 chapters present here.

Audio Rating: 3/5

The Dolby Digital 2.0 sound mix has, like many releases in the Fox Cinema Archive program, been set at absurdly high volume levels and must be reset at lower levels to prevent distortion. Even with the adjustment, one can occasionally make out some scratchy distortion in the background. Hiss and other anomalies aren’t much of a problem though there is an occasional light pop. Still, the dialogue is easily understandable and Emil Newman’s music mixes well with the speech and the sound effects on this mono track.

Special Features Rating: 0/5

There are no bonus features on this made-on-demand disc.

Overall Rating: 3/5

It’s always a treat to see Henry Fonda occasionally in lighter fare than in his usual heavy dramatics, and while The Magnificent Dope isn’t anywhere near his best comedy, it’s a pleasurable time passer and certainly worth seeing once.

Reviewed By: Matt Hough

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[Virgoan]

Am always glad to find another Meechy film. Donna...Donna Meechy!