Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the fifth of six Thin Man flicks. If you’re just now tuning in, I’m running through the Thin Man Box Set, one film a day, leading up until next Monday’s kick-off of my all new column: A Movie A Week, which will be HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE, starring Marilyn Monroe and THIN MAN’s William Powell.
We’re almost through the Thin Man flicks. Today we look at the penultimate installment called THE THIN MAN GOES HOME in which, you guessed it, Nick and Nora go spend a “quiet” weekend with Nick’s parents. They ditch the kid (something about him having to do preschool), but bring Asta to the quaint little town where Nick’s daddy is a prominent doctor.
I was kinda hoping that Dr. Charles would be the equivalent of Nick, only a boozy genius surgeon instead of a boozy genius detective. Alas that was not to be. Instead they play up the respectable father who wishes his son had been a doctor and stayed in the family business angle. And Nick is the son looking for his father’s approval.
Strangely enough, it’s Nora who sets that ball in motion, wanting Nick’s father to see his son work first hand. She gets gossip going around this small town that Nick’s there on a case and suddenly the papers pick up on it and everybody doing something shady starts freaking out, of course leading to a murder that Nick has to figure out.
That’s fucked up in a way. Nora wanted her husband to get a pat on the back from the old man and to do that she shook the hornet’s nest hoping something like a murder would fall in their laps. Damn, woman!
Shortly after the papers get wind of Nick being in town, a man shows up at Nick’s parent’s house asking for him. Before he can get a word out, he’s shot from a long way away… no sound is heard, but he drops dead with a bullet in his body.
Of the colorful characters in the town, Anne Revere’s Crazy Mary is the stand-out. She’s a local hermit/bag lady/nut and becomes more and more central to the mystery of the flick as it unravels.
Other than that, I’m afraid to say this movie feels flat, the spark of the previous films barely more than a static shock here. Both Loy and Powell are showing their age, not so much in the looks department (although they both now feel like sitcom parents instead of lively adventurers), but in their energy. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they phoned this one in, but I did get the sense that there wasn’t much for them to grab on to in this one.
In fact, Loy even has a big moment at the end when Nick gathers everyone together to find the murderer (a la THE THIN MAN and ANOTHER THIN MAN) where she narrates the events to Nick’s father, talking about what’s going to happen and how Nick’s going to figure it out like he always does. In short, she’s winking at the audience. “Hey, this is how we’ve done it before! We know we’re doing the same thing here, but since we talk about it it’s now different!”
Final Thoughts: Excusing the pun, the series is feeling spread thin at this point. I’m hoping the final installment has a little more life to it. If Dean Stockwell as Nick Charles Jr. can rack up the charm and the mystery is fun I think the series could have a real, good send-off. I suspect it’d be better than this one, at least I hope so.
Up next:
Saturday, April 25th: SONG OF THE THIN MAN (1947)
One more to go and then I get a day off before starting A MOVIE A WEEK officially. See you folks tomorrow for the final Thin Man film: SONG OF THE THIN MAN!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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