"HOME, JAMES!"

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19508, 3 January 1929, Page 7

"HOME, JAMES!"

TWO GORGEOUS COMEDIES. EVERYBODY'S, MONDAY. Next week Everybody's Theatre is starting off the New Year with a riot of large and long laughs. During the length of the first, and minor of two very major pictures, Charlie Murray and Louise Fazenda will delight the multitudes with their original fooling in "Vamping Venus," and in the second picture Laura la Plante will go through all her coy little mannerisms and amusing side-steps in "Home, James," a lordly and, alternately, frivolous and speedy little comedy. "Home, James," has struck a new note in screen comedies, and not before its time. It has become increasingly difficult to find a comedy that is at once amusing and new, and here it is in "Home, James." The unhappy and buffeted James in the story is Charles Delaney, a pleasant young man with a face that is not too devastatingly handsome, a disarming smile, and an aptitude, in this picture at any rate, for holding his tongue. The story is complicated, of a swift and lively pace, and has that romantic bent without which no picture is. Miss Laura —always a most energetic and enquiring young person—is, in the story, an artist whose pictures ■ no one will buy; she takes a position in that mystic thing, a department store. The department is ruu by the two Laceys, the father and son, and also run by the floorwalker, a dignified and awesome personage who is pricelessly played by Arthur Hoyt. But to the story. The pretty young thing behind the counter mistakes the son for a chauffeur, and, to impress her step-mother and step-sister, she introduces the young heir as her chauffeur, his home as her home, and, in general, goes through the whole game with amazing - sangfroid and a deal of fertile imagination. It is all great fun, particularly when the young man's father returns home, and gets mad as a hornet at the whole show, a-nd claps several participants in gaol, and holds up the romance until love, and a strong right arm, finally find a way. * 'Home, James," is the right sort of comedy to open the New Year, with all its good resolutions to laugh more and to grouch less. Laura la Plante is as fresh and perky as usual, Charles Delaney is a really nice young man, and Arthur Hoyt is one elongated yell. "Vamping Venus" shows an Irishman running Ancient Greece. And, as Washington would say, how! Charlie Murray ip a belligerent and dangerous Michael Cassidy, and Louise Fazenda is the average critical spouse, and Thelma Todd, a classical dancer, whom Michael sees bv mistake one night. The rest of the picture is turned over to the Irish and the Greeks, and they make out of it a hugely funny fight, with a few periods of sentimentality, that make the picture stand out from its fellows. Altogether these two comedies are about as excellent a bill as any management could secure for a festive season. The eleventh series of those snappy and useful films "The Collegians," will also be screened. These junior stars return with some newer and more sparkling pictures which will prove very popular. The box plans are now open at The Bristol . Piayo Company.