Review of She Done Him Wrong

I assume that Leonard Maltin's perfect **** out of 4 stars rating for "She Done Him Wrong" comes from a viewing several decades ago; perhaps it's time for a revision. Because, compared to, say, another **** comedy of 1933, "Duck Soup", this one comes up quite a bit short. While some of Mae West's lines are extremely bold for their time ("Haven't you ever met a man who could make you happy?" - "Sure, lots of times!"), few of them are funny enough to raise even a chuckle. Cary Grant is a little stiff in this early performance; only in the last 5 minutes do we get to experience the familiar (and celebrated) Cary Grant persona (if you can't instantly figure out who The Hawk is, this must be the first movie of your life). And the rest of the supporting characters are pretty nondescript. There is one memorable, surprisingly serious sequence (West's fight with Rafaela Ottiano, whose eye-poppingly voluptuous figure makes West's look almost flat!), but the consequences of what happens are then ignored. This movie is often regarded as a classic, but I can't give it more than ** out of 4.