The Merry Frinks (1934) User Reviews

Delightful, rather dark, Pre-Code comedy

[Handlinghandel · 6/10 · 27 March 2008]

At the beginning, this seems like an early version of "You Can't Take It You." It has a darker cast, though.

Aline MacMahon is saddled with one of the most ghastly families seen before the one on the Carol Burnett Show, which was spun off into "Mama's Family." Her husband, Hugh Herbert, is a sports writer described by his managing editor as a chronic alcoholic. Her daughter is selfish and dreams of a singing career. The son (Frankie Darro) is a truant who wants to become a fighter.

The demanding hypochondriac of a mother-in-law is there, too, constantly nagging. And none other than Allen Jenkins is her elder son. He is a lawyer and a Socialist.

Guy Kibbee shows up as a long-last relative. He's all they need in their cramped Bronx apartment.

The plot twists and turns. MacMahon is marvelous. And the rest of the cast does a fine job, too.

one more self sacrificing mother

[jpickerel · 7/10 · 22 March 2008]

The great thing about this movie is that you will, if you watch it, see some of the busiest and best character actors of the 1930's Hollywood strut their stuff. Aline McMahon, Hugh Herbert (in a less than sympathetic role, unusual for him), Guy Kibbee, Allan Jenkins and Frankie Darro. Pay no attention to the plot, it just gets in the way of some of the finest bits of scenery chewing ever put on film. Jenkins, especially, is as loud, as obnoxious, and as hammy as you'll ever see him. At no time does he speak at a decibel level less than ear splitting. (He's a communist, you see, at a time when they didn't cart you off to jail for it). Here is Aline McMahon, a really fine actress, emoting to such a degree that it makes you want to cringe. And Frankie Darro, prancing around, shadow boxing, wearing his hat brim turned up (this, apparently, was meant to make you look tough, much as turning the brim sideways does today). Frankie's problem was that he looked as though he might weigh 83 pounds, if he wore lead boots. No, the plot (disfunctional family learns it lesson, eventually, and learns to appreciate Mother) isn't important here. The opportunity to see these folks certainly is, though.

watch the bickering family try to work things out

[ksf-2 · 7/10 · 7 March 2008]

The Frinks are a family of non-stop bickering, drink-sneaking, school skipping folks, and all before breakfast! Viewers with recognize (or hear) the nasal Allen Jenkins as the dad Emmet Frink - always played the new york cab driver, or small time thug. Also look for Louise Beavers, who starred in "Imitation of Life" the same year. Guy Kibbee and Hugh Herbert are along for the vaudeville bits. Not a lot of other big names in this Warner Brothers 68 minute piece, but very entertaining and more realistic than all those sweet, soapy clean, rich, society movies of the late 1930s and 1940s. Kind of a strange moment when the rough, tough-talking son does a mocking, swishing walk across the room, just as the Hays Code was started being enforced. Also, about 20 minutes in, there are film quality issues on the TCM version I saw. Hattie, the mom, is the central figure (played by Aline MacMahon), and has to make big decisions in her life that will affect her whole family. She sometimes says "Noooorman" in a long, shrill, up-swooping voice at the end, Psycho-style. Has the feel of a film made from a play, since most of the action takes place in their kitchen. Produced by Jack Warner and Hal Wallis - (what a wide range of movies Wallis had done - this in 1934, Casablanca in 42, then half of the silly Elvis movies in the 50s and 60s) Fun, realistic, fast paced. Very plain and simple plot. Doesn't get bogged down with long scenes.

The Anti-Hardy Family

[brianina · 4/10 · 27 April 2001]

During this time only W.C. Fields was showing a typical American family as a bunch of good-for-nothing, ungrateful louts, but even Fields' worst can't match a tenth of the so-called Merry Frinks. Dad is a drunken newspaperman who can't hold a job, his mother is a crotchety whiner who demands breakfast in bed while trying to sneak booze away from her son, his oldest son is a Communist constantly spouting off about the evils of capitalism, the youngest son plays hooky from school to go to prizefights and his daughter is having an affair with a married man. The only decent person in the house is long-suffering Mama Frink who waits on them and cleans up the catastrophes the Frinks leave in their wake. Her job becomes even harder when her husband's windbag uncle shows up on the doorstep from New Zealand. The cast is populated with some of Warner Brothers' best character actors of the early 1930's but the result is more outrageous than funny and after a while you just want someone to kill the family and be done with it. Director Green does provide one great camera move as Papa Frink arrives home to be pursued by his nagging relatives while walking through the entire house twice in a continuous tracking shot that must have been difficult to stage. Plus Warner's lab must have been especially bored as this film uses every optical wipe of the time.

A great idea ruined by a complete lack of subtlety or pacing.

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 8 April 2015]

Nice assembly of supporting actors--McMahon, Kibbee, Jenkins, Darro, Herbert, Huber awful family--very demanding and selfish lot Jenkins a commie?! Lays it on TOO thick in general, lacks subtlety--could have been better

"The Merry Frinks" is a very frustrating film to watch. The story idea is great and the movie is chock full of wonderful bit actors from the Warner Brothers' lot. But, the writer took a great idea and completely ruined it--and the director didn't help either!

The Frinks are an awful lot. Each of the children, Grandma and Father are all selfish jerk-faces. Holding the family together is Mom (Aline MacMahon)--who puts up with all their obnoxious behaviors and is quite the enabler. However, through the course of the film, each of the family members makes Mom miserable again and again. However, just after she's had enough and is a miserable, broken woman, a lawyer shows up and announces that Ma has inherited $500,000 (a HUGE sum in the 1930s)...on the condition that she abandon her family! She naturally agrees...but she is pretty miserable leading a life of leisure. And, not surprisingly, the family falls to pieces without her.

The problem with the film is that the family is completely unbelievable. They overdo the awfulness so much that it never seems the least bit plausible and the film comes off much worse than it should have. The director also should have done something about this--but it all comes off as a great idea wasted due to ham-fisted writing and directing. I would love to see a remake of this one...one that makes the family semi-plausible and the ending possible. As it is, this was just a frustrating mess of a film.

Mama doesn't want to take this family with her.

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 1 April 2015]

"Old man Frink has had one too many drink; First born Frink has sent his country to the brink; Next born son needs to be behind a link; Grandma Frink hates her family link; and Mama Frink has had it with the kitchen sink." Mom Frink is the heart and soul of this wacky family, but unfortunately, nobody realizes it. Her sports writer family spends too much time at the local tavern, while the oldest son (an attorney without any paying clients even though he has two Russian immigrants who keep turning the household upside down) is trying to overthrow America through his bedroom. Grandma Frink pretends to be bedridden but is able to get out of her bed to retrieve her own hidden flask. Mom Frink wants to see her daughter with a nice rich young man who is in love with her, but her youngest son is an obvious juvenile delinquent with truant officers on his trail. Then, an aging uncle arrives, tons of baggage in hand, obviously planning on remaining for a not quite so short visit. In short, this is a house of chaos, right off the 6 train at Astor Place.

A dark comedy with heavy dramatic overtones, it features a superb performance from stage actress Aline MacMahon, a tall, statuesque beauty who was offered the chance to be a leading lady but preferred character parts. In the mid 1930's, she played leading roles, but her leads are definitely of the character variety. When her character, who has had enough, ends up leaving home with money she's inherited, ends up in a posh Manhattan beauty parlor, MacMahon's long black hair shows her to be quite striking. She is also an earth mother, one of those truly noble human beings whose family here learns too late just how much she meant to them and how she was the one who held the family together.

Allen Jenkins is completely over the top as MacMahon's oldest son (the age difference between them is absurd), with Frank McHugh a complete dipsomaniac from start to almost finish as her husband, usually carrying a duck or turkey (or drinking cold duck or wild turkey). Frankie Darro, at the height of his fame after "Wild Boys of the Road", plays a variation of the same character he did in that cult classic, while Joan Wheeler is totally bland as the selfish daughter. Disguised in old age make-up, Helen Lowell is hysterical as the attention seeking grandmother. During MacMahon's transformation into a Park Avenue socialite, Ivan Lebedeff is suave and cool as a Spanish gigolo, set up for MacMahon by her maid (an amusing Louise Beavers), while Guy Kibbee is a delightful old rascal as the uncle who shows up out of nowhere with a stuffed alligator whom McHugh utilizes to hide his booze in to comic effect thanks to Lowell.

Certainly more bittersweet than hysterically funny, there's still plenty of laughs and good one-liners, and this is a vision of a family that certainly can't be compared to MGM's Hardy clan. It still teaches a great lesson, of taking mother for granted, of individual family member's discovery that they can't be selfish, and comically, not to mix everything in the refrigerator into a recipe that might end up giving you more than indigestion.

A 10 just for the opening twenty minutes alone.

[thehumphreyshousehold · 10/10 · 12 December 2019]

This film is hilarious. It loses a little about half way through, but the opening 20 minutes with the disfunctional family is downright hilarious. This pre *Roseanne" family is something you never saw in old Holltwo6od films. Dad is a drunk, the son is a juvenile delinquent, daughter is an ungreatful brat, the brother is an angry communust, grandma is a foul mouthed sneaky drunk who is always lobbing insults and fighting with the teenager. Then throw in Guy Kibbee, the long lost uncle who decides to move in with them. Finally, we have mom. A contrast to them all A total sweetheart who is constantly doing nice things for the family she loves. This is a must see.

Even Aline can't save this one

[marcslope · 4/10 · 16 March 2015]

Very peculiar Warners comedy, with a good Warners cast, that in a way presages "You Can't Take It With You," but doesn't nearly match it.It's similarly about a do-your-own-thing family in the Depression--dad's a sportswriter who drinks too much, one son (Allen Jenkins, unusually cast) a Communist-leaning lawyer, a daughter's dating a married man, little Frankie Darro is a would- be prizefighter. And Aline MacMahon, that Warners treasure, is the mom who tries to keep the family together and can't. You have to watch humiliation upon humiliation pile on this woman before you get to a late payoff, and it's painful. The comedy's just not very funny, and it strains credulity that these ingrates would suddenly see the errors of their ways. Helping are Guy Kibbee as a wastrel relative who turns out not to be a wastrel, and Louise Beavers as (forever) a maid. But it's a strained, uncomfortable piece, and it's not surprising that it's not remembered.

Not what you Frink it is

[F Gwynplaine MacIntyre · 3/10 · 3 July 2004]

'The Merry Frinks' sounds like it's about a vaudeville act. Actually, this is one of the more obscure examples of a comedy subgenre that was popular in the 1930s: a 'wacky' family with several different eccentric personalities all living under the same roof. Well-known examples of this subgroup are 'You Can't Take It with You' and 'Three-Cornered Moon'. 'The Merry Frinks' is more plausible than either of these, but not much.

I really dislike Aline MacMahon. She was an extremely plain-featured character actress whose performances I've always found very mannered and unrealistic. I've never understood why some people value her so highly. In his book about pre-1945 movie stars, film historian David Shipman devotes a chapter to MacMahon ... but she was definitely a supporting actress, not a star, despite what Shipman says. And yet in 'The Merry Frinks' she is cast in the central and largest role, for one of the very few times in her film career. (Another starring vehicle for MacMahon was 'Once in a Lifetime'.)

Hattie Frink (MacMahon) has the thankless task of slaving for her family of oddball no-hopers. These include her husband (the annoying Hugh Herbert), who keeps getting sacked for drunkenness; her eldest son Emmett, a radical lawyer (Allen Jenkins, cast against type in a role that should have been played by Wallace Ford); her truant son Stinky (the excellent Frankie Darro); and her meddlesome mother-in-law.

Rich uncle Newt (the great Guy Kibbee) shows up on the Frink doorstep, expecting Hattie to cook his favourite meal for him. She does, and it kills him ... but he dies happy. Then it turns out that Newt has left all his millions to Hattie, with the proviso that she must leave her family in order to collect the dosh. She scarpers off to Park Avenue and takes up with a gigolo (Ivan Lebedeff). Meanwhile, chez Frink, Hattie's family are forced to fend without her ... and they appreciate her at last.

This story could have been quite funny, but it's too unpleasant. 'The Merry Frinks' reminds me of that intentionally awful Monty Python sketch about the world's most disgusting family. We're expected to empathise with Hattie Frink, but I didn't care about her nor anyone else in this movie. Will Hattie give up her millions to move back home with her ingrate family? The ending is both highly predictable and extremely implausible. On the way to get there, we do see one extremely impressive tracking shot (by the underrated Arthur Edeson) which required a very complicated 'wild' interior set of the entire Frink house. Elsewhere, the photographic effects seem to be more complicated than necessary. This film reminded me of several WC Fields movies (such as 'Man on the Flying Trapeze') in which he's put upon by his entire family, the difference being that in this case the victim is the materfamilias.

I'll rate this movie only 3 points out of 10. At the risk of being ungallant, I'll say that one reason I found this movie so unpleasant is because Aline MacMahon is so ugly. If a more photogenic actress (such as the underrated Ruth Donnelly) had been cast in the main role, I would have found the movie much less painful to watch. There's nothing very merry about the Frinks.