This movie is adapted from a play and it shows : the action is dreadfully static, the scenes are confined and often drag on through overlong dialogues, and the actors tend to overact. Moreover, the rhythm, which is supposed to be frenetic, is in fact rather sloppy, some passages just weigh down the dynamic of this original premise that had quite some potential comic-wise. The Lemmon-Matthauw duo still works well but the two characters are not enough on-screen at the same time which is a shame because this is one of the only positive aspects of The Front Page, one of the last, and less inspired, productions of the Wilder-Diamond association.
Review of The Front Page
