The Night Before the Divorce (1942) Poster

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5/10
Weak Crazy Comedy
boblipton29 April 2020
Lynn Bari and Joseph Allen have been married for three years and the cracks are showing in the marriage. She's so competent it galls his tender male pride. To soothe it, he's taken up with Mary Beth Hughes and as soon as the divorce goes through, they will be wed. However, when Miss Bari's new boyfriend, Nils Asther is married, she decides to tell Allen she murdered him and ask for his help.

There are a number of cracks in this crazy comedy, including the fact that Asther's murder is never solved. Allen is annoyingly theatrical in his performance. Clearly this is not director Robert Siodmak's area of competence. The ladies are fine, though, and there's good support from performers Thurston Hall and Robert Emmett Keane. See if you can spot Dorothy and Ruby Dandrige in tiny roles.
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3/10
Very dated and easy to skip.
planktonrules31 December 2015
"The Night Before the Divorce" is an incredibly dated and sexist film. George is marries to Lynn--a woman who is incredibly bright, lovely and accomplished. Naturally, George resents her because he has a very small....um...I mean he has a very fragile ego. So, when the conniving Lola May sets her sights on stealing away George, he's a very easy mark--and when Lynn finds out, she seeks a divorce. However, before the divorce is final, Lynn falls in the middle of a murder case and George rises to the occasion to protect and defend his now helpless wife. In other words, girls, to keep your man you have to be dumb and subservient...or, get a man who isn't a complete idiot!!! I would hope my daughters would choose the latter!

In addition to the stupid message about how sexism is GOOD, the film also fails in many other ways. The characters are mostly unlikable and the film has very little to distinguish it. It's just a cheap B- movie with a ridiculous plot.

As for the other review on IMDb, they complain about how ratings are inexplicably inflated for many films on the site. I do agree and this movie clearly is NOT the quality of its current 6.1 rating. However, there are far more egregious cases than this---such as how some group has rated all the films of William Haines and Marion Davies 10s...and both were, at best, mediocre actors (Haines, in particular, pretty much made the same movie again and again).
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4/10
If she's perfect, then her heart of gold must have been dipped in acid.
mark.waltz17 April 2017
Warning: Spoilers
This second rate screwball comedy makes the claim that sophistication mixed with wisecracks and acidic stares are the ingredients of "the perfect wife". Lynn Bari isn't about to end her marriage without some womanly wiles detaining it, but what happens when she's a suspect in a murder of someone she's been seeing on the side. The ex to be is Joseph Allen (yes, I'd never heard of him before either), the other woman is Mary Beth Hughes (whom he met when he ran her scooter off the road), and a chance encounter between the two supposed ex's is supposed to make the audience root for to get back together.

Predictably, Bari uses her predicament to delay the divorce, keeping Hughes waiting for Allen in divorce court, and open up the divorcing couple to get back together. It's preposterous, heavy handed and features leading actors with absolutely zero spark. Nils Asther plays the stereotypical lout, only given a mysterious note to give the audience a clue of what will happen. A "B" film made on unused "A" sets looks like the script was rushed together, that the stars filmed overnight, and rushed through editing to get this onto the bottom of a double bill. With scripts like this, the only divorce would be between studio and screenwriter.
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