6/10
Shipboard drama with mystery, comedy, romance, and big musical numbers
6 September 2016
Gene Raymond and Nancy Carroll lead a large cast in this entertaining but sometimes confounding ocean liner mystery. There's a lot going on:

Con man Gene Raymond boards the ship and immediately sets his sights on Nancy Carroll as a likely target; predictably, their relationship grows into something more complicated than he planned. Gangster Sidney Blackmer is also aboard, blackmailing and threatening right and left. Police inspector Robert Elliot is on a holiday but finds himself quickly pressed back into service when a man is murdered two days into the voyage.

Jack Benny plays a radio personality in charge of entertainment on the ship; his little troupe puts on a show that offers an interesting glimpse of Benny early in his radio career (but distracts from the film's plot, such as it is)—a skit, a song or two, and a big dance production, Busby Berkeley style, that looks great.

Another subplot involves cranky old Ralph Morgan and his runaway wife Shirley Grey….everything kinds of ties together by the end, but I have to say that with all of the musical and comic interludes it's a bit hard to follow.

Very enjoyable and certainly not boring—but it kind of left me scratching my head.
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