The Animal Kingdom (1932)

Pre-code film, which I suppose you'd call a melodrama, is about an independent minded heir to a publishing house and his somewhat complicate personal life. Tom Collier (Leslie Howard) has long been a disappointment to his father Rufus (Henry Stephenson), having dropped out of Harvard and Cambridge, bummed around with his friends, lived with a women for three years (Ann Harding), insisted on the publishing house printing unprofitable artsy fair, and having an ex prize fighter for a butler (William Gargan). Rufus thinks his son might be on the verge of reforming when he's invited to Tom's country house to learn of his engagement to proper lady socialite Cee Henry (Myrna Loy).

Tom is in love with Cee, but still feels a deep connection to Daisy (Harding), a women with whom he apparently once had a 'friends with benefits' type relationship. When Tom visits Daisy, recently returned from a long trip to France, to inform her of his engagement it results in a rupture in their relationship. Tom takes to essentially holing up with his wife in the country and neglecting the reset of his old bohemian friends.

Less then a year after his wedding Daisy returns from an extended absence in Mexico where she was practicing to be a painter. Tom looks her up in an attempt to rekindle their friendship, but Daisy pushes him away, because you see she's really in love with him. Cee also loves him, but she actually gets along with his father and encourages Tom to make more practical business decisions. This is apparently too much to ask and in the end Tom leaves Cee and returns to Daisy, whom he's always really loved.

This was kind of ridicules, Tom just proves that he wants to regress, because he views 'growing up' to be 'selling out'. I thought Cee was perfectly nice, and not unreasonable, of course she was a little uncomfortable with Tom and Daisy's previous relationship, but why wouldn't she be (on the whole she's very understanding about it, epically given the period). If Cee was perhaps a little too comfortable around Rufus's assistant Owen (Neil Hamilton, who played Police Commissioner Gordon in the 1960's Batman TV show), it's because they once dated, and she never even kisses the guy, which is more then can be said for Tom who kisses Daisy throughout the movie. I don't think there was any good reason to leave Cee, he could have just told her that he didn't want to sell the family publishing house, and I think she would have accepted that. Anyway Myrna Loy's prettier then Ann Harding, but the latter was the bigger star at the time.

This movie's okay I guess, but there was disappointingly little to it, and other "scandalous" films of the period certainly had more guts. The more I think about it, the more of just a waste of time this movie feels, for both the viewer and the actors, who are all capable of doing so much more. I don't think a lot of thought went into this thing, which was very workman like in its execution and little more. No sir, I did not like it, Grade: D-