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Title: Here Comes Mr Jordan by Robert Montgomery ISBN: 6-3027974-1-1 Pub. Date: April, 1988 Format: VHS Tape

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Average Customer Rating: 4.91 (11 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: That's Entertainment
Comment: I saw this movie years ago at a theatre that specialized in movie classics of the past. I assumed, then, that I was going to see a good movie but I wasn't aware just how good this movie was and is. It fits into the category of comedy but there's a lot of other things going on throughout the film. The basic plot can be summed up easily if you've seen "Heaven Can Wait" with Warren Beatty. Instead of the main character being a quarterback, Robert Montgomery is a boxer. If you didn't see Beatty's remake, then let me tell you that an up and coming boxer is flying his own plane when it suddenly veers out of control. An impatient angel assumes the fatal crash and calls the boxer home to Heaven. The irate boxer explains that he was just coming out of the spin when the angel interupts him. The discussion drags on but the head angel, Mr. Jordan, agrees that the boxer is owed another chance at life and so the next step is to find him a new body (his other one was prematurely cremated). Well, there are a lot of hijinks, intrigues and romance along the way; all of it very enjoyable to watch. You might get as confused as the boxer's manager who is always at least two steps behind the plot. However, each twist and turn leads to an eventual happy ending. The acting is very good but it is the script that is the star of this show. Some younger friends of mine (who saw the movie with me recently) thought the romantic end was too hard to take (true love in two minutes). On the other hand, once you've accepted the beginning of the movie, anything else is fair game. Everyone should see this movie at least once; even if they've seen the lesser remake "Heaven Can Wait". It's a reminder that the great movies of the past are still great today (assuming you are able to temporarily discard your cinicism).

Rating: 5
Summary: Still "In the Pink" Sixty Years On
Comment: It is a shame that this delightful comedy isn't better known today. Part of the reason might lie in the fact that the film's star Robert Montgomery (father of Elizabeth Montgomery of BEWITCHED), after a stint in the military in WW II, did very little acting following the war. Therefore, he doesn't have many later films to draw attention to his career as a whole. Also, after the war he because deeply involved in political matters, and was one of Hollywood's more avid Communist hunters. For whatever reason, the film does not today have the reputation it deserves.

There have been two remakes of this film, so some explanation is in order. HERE COMES MR. JORDAN was a film version of a play by Harry Segal titled HEAVEN CAN WAIT. There was a 1944 film by Ernst Lubitsch called HEAVEN CAN WAIT starring Don Ameche, but that movie had nothing in common with HERE COMES MR. JORDAN (apart from being an equally superb comedy). In 1978, Warren Beatty wanted to remake HERE COMES MR. JORDAN using the original play's title with Muhammad Ali in the lead role, but Ali's schedule made this impossible, so he cast himself in the lead and transformed the central character into a football quarterback. Not as good as the original film, this actually wasn't a bad movie at all. In 2001, the film was remade again as DOWN TO EARTH, starring Chris Rock. I often love Chris Rock, but this film is not merely one of the low points of his career: it is a miserable film on every level, with the dreadful decision to make our hero a comic rather than an athlete.

Because of the remakes, the plot is familiar: Joe Pendleton, a boxer with a penchant for playing the saxophone and a shot at the title, is accidentally taken to heaven fifty years too early by an overzealous angel who wrongly assumes that he is about to die. The angel, Messenger 7013 (played marvelously by the inimitable Edward Everett Horton), brings Joe to his supervisor, Mr. Jordan (played magnificently by the ultra-suave and civilized Claude Rains). It is decided to provide Joe with a new body, where upon he tries in his new millionaire's body to get back into shape ("in the pink") in order to get a new shot at the championship. The only trouble is that the millionaire's wife and lover want to kill him so they can get his money and each other. Rounding out a great cast is Evelyn Keyes as the girlfriend of Joe (and the love interest of his subsequent incarnations) and James Gleason, Joe's trainer, who nearly steals ever scene he is in. The scene where Joe, in his new body, hires Gleason and then tries to convince him of his real identity, is just hysterical.

More people need to see this film. It remains one of the finer comedies made immediately before the onset of WW II, and is vastly better than the two films based upon it. It deserves far more attention than it has, in recent years, received.

Rating: 5
Summary: HERE COMES A CLASSIC COMEDY
Comment: Stories which carry an audience to other worlds or realms of experience are enthusiastically received regardless of trends, fads, or the prevailing national mood. HERE COMES MR. JORDAN is a variation of the usual simple motif of a benevolent angel being sent on a mission to earth. The film begins its rather complicated and enjoyable tale by turning the tables and having a human being journey to heaven to rectify an angelic error. This delightful 1941 film is delightfully refreshing, but its real strength lies in the performance of Robert Montgomery. His sustaining sense of awe concerning all that is happening never falters nor becomes overdone, and he never allows the audience to entertain the idea that the film is a fantasy. Claude Rains performance as Mr. Jordan is immaculate, and Edward Everett Horton makes one hope that none of his descendents are still in the heavenly messenger business! Strangely enough, as clever and quick as the male actors' dialogue is, the dialogue is proportiately bland and unimaginitive for the women. James Gleason as feisty Max Corkle comes close to scene stealing, and all the male characters have solid well-written roles.