After Office Hours

Directed by Robert Z. Leonard, After Office Hours follows newspaper editor Jim Branch (Clark Gable) as he and a reporter (Constance Bennett’s Sharon Norwood) fall in love while attempting to solve a murder. Filmmaker Leonard, working from Herman J. Mankiewicz’s wordy screenplay, delivers a briskly-paced yet entirely uninvolving drama that contains few elements designed to capture and sustain one’s interest, and it’s increasingly clear, certainly, that the pervasive emphasis on rapid-fire dialogue progresses from compelling to exhausting almost immediately – with the less-than-substantial plot, coupled with an almost total lack of momentum, paving the way for a midsection that contains few, if any, engaging attributes. (There’s a quick, rather inconsequential scene set in a roadside diner that’s more interesting and involving than anything else within the picture, but it’s ultimately an outlier.) The decision to heavily stress the murder investigation within the film’s rather interminable third act cements After Office Hours‘ place as a palpable misfire, which is a shame, certainly, given that there does exist a fair amount of chemistry between Gable and Bennett’s respective characters.

*1/2 out of ****