Rating: 
Summary: A great example of the old screwball comedy movies.
Review: I have seen a lot of the old black and white screwball comedy movies over the years. This one definitely belongs in the top echelon. Much of the credit goes to Preston Sturgiss who has some very fresh and creative twists on some very standard plot formulas. Of course, the excellent acting contributes a great deal, as well. Be warned, however. After watching this movie, most of what you see on television TV and on the big screen these days will seem more wretched than ever.
Rating: 
Summary: I just can't get enough
Review: I just can't get enough of this movie. I love every funny love vasaline minute of it. No seriously I hate this movie. The music in it is so dag. And music has a great deal to do with me. But I really love everything else, Barbara Stanwyck really makes lady eve booty. But I hate the damn cinmatography. Let others say what they will, this movie is not good. Half the time it rolls up on yah like Eastwood blowin up 15s as I'm drivin through your neighborhood. You should really see it, it's a clasic. I could watch it over and over again. I just hate that Barbara Stanwyck!!!
Rating:
Summary: A nearly forgotten classic
Review: I recently discovered the NY Times list of "1000 best films ever," and if not for that list I would have never seen "The Lady Eve." As a child of the '70s the names Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda conjure up dramatic images of "The Big Valley" and "The Grapes of Wrath," not exactly the kind of thing I'd go out of my way to see. With the Times's recommendation, however, I decided to give this 1941 film a look.
Imagine my surprise to find Fonda showing such a wonderful flair for comedy! Having some familiarity with film history, I knew that Stanwyck in her day had been quite a femme fatale, and she certainly is here, but the innocent Fonda character wins her over...more or less. Their on-again, off-again romance carries almost as many plot twists as their are laughs in this wonderful film.
I'm one of those people who like the idea of "old movies" better than almost any specific old movie, but thanks to the Times I now have a clue as to which old films are really worth savoring. "The Lady Eve" is high on that list now, along with such as "Camilla" and "The Little Foxes" (I always knew about "Casablanca," at least). Why did it take me so long to find this gem? Nobody said anything about it. Shame on you older folks for keeping this secret to yourself! I guess it's up to latecomers like me to pass the word on to those of us under 50.
Rating:
Summary: Simply the best "screwball comedy" ever made!
Review: I recently watched the Criterion DVD edition of this classic Preston Sturges comedy and was amazed as with every time that I watch it at how amazingly funny and enjoyable it is to view. My pick as the best of the glory period of filmmaking by Mr. Sturges, this movie simply does not age or lose any of it's greatness, viewing after viewing, year after year. Barbara Stanwyck simply radiates as "The Lady Eve", and is the marvelous core around which the movie is centered. Do yourself a favor and rent, buy or borrow a copy of this wonderful movie (The Criterion DVD, if possible), and sit back and be prepared to be entertained by a movie that definitely will keep you returning again and again to what is in my opinion the best of all the "screwball" comedies that came out in the 30's and 40's, and one of the best comedies flat out ever made!
Rating:
Summary: Best American Laugher
Review: I saw bits and pieces of The Lady Eve on Turner occasionally and never watched long enough to have an opinion one way or the other. I enjoyed Preston Sturges, Sullivan's Travels and realize he's one of the greats of American film comedy, so I rented The Lady Eve on a friend's recommendation. I enjoyed young handsome Henry Fonda and particularly Barbara Stanwyck. Barbara Stanwyck is not a favorite actress of mine. Maybe it's her brassy delivery and non-leading lady face, but I've changed my mind. Barbara is without a doubt the equal of Claudette Colbert or Carole Lombard in screwball comedy. She might be better. There is a burning intensity, a wistfulness in her delivery of: "Sometimes a good girl can be bad and a bad girl can be good." Fonda has been in the Amazon for a year and on a ship home he runs into a family of card sharks. Barbara traps him, he trips, falls, lands on his ass, and holds her stocking foot. Then they fall in love in some of the most romantic photography of a beautiful couple ever shot. The farce goes on to its final brilliance. There is one pratfall that made me laugh out loud for five minutes. Preston Sturgis is one of the best five directors in all of film.
Rating:
Summary: Best American Laugher
Review: I saw bits and pieces of The Lady Eve on Turner occasionally and never watched long enough to have an opinion one way or the other. I enjoyed Preston Sturges, Sullivan's Travels and realize he's one of the greats of American film comedy, so I rented The Lady Eve on a friend's recommendation. I enjoyed young handsome Henry Fonda and particularly Barbara Stanwyck. Barbara Stanwyck is not a favorite actress of mine. Maybe it's her brassy delivery and non-leading lady face, but I've changed my mind. Barbara is without a doubt the equal of Claudette Colbert or Carole Lombard in screwball comedy. She might be better. There is a burning intensity, a wistfulness in her delivery of: "Sometimes a good girl can be bad and a bad girl can be good." Fonda has been in the Amazon for a year and on a ship home he runs into a family of card sharks. Barbara traps him, he trips, falls, lands on his ass, and holds her stocking foot. Then they fall in love in some of the most romantic photography of a beautiful couple ever shot. The farce goes on to its final brilliance. There is one pratfall that made me laugh out loud for five minutes. Preston Sturgis is one of the best five directors in all of film.
Rating:
Summary: One of Preston's masterpieces
Review: I'm a devout Preston Sturges fan -- I love all his films, especially "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" and "Christmas in July" -- his films have no villains -- plot complications arise from misunderstandings, almost never from deliberate villainy or cruelty -- however, in "The Lady Eve" the scene on the honeymoon train trip when Stanwyck humiliates Fonda makes me squirm a bit -- she wants to get revenge and teach him a lesson, but the cruel way she does it is unusual for a Sturges film.
Rating:
Summary: One of the great screwball comedies of all time
Review: In my opinion, one of the great film comedies of all time. The most supriseing thing to me, when I first saw it, was the idea that Babara Stanwyck could be sexy. Considering the time it was made, her scene in the stateroom Henry Fonda looking for a lost snake is just about as steamy as you could get in the '30s. A remarkable scene.Wonderful characters all through like Eric Blore. Perfect comic timeing by everyone. No message, pure fluff, but just about the best made, funiest fluff you'll ever see. Even if you've seen it before, the pratfalls remain as funny as ever, such as Fonda going through 3 changes of clothing before dinner!
Rating:
Summary: Among the finest screwball comedies ever, period.
Review: In reading some of the comments below, I am flabbergasted to read that apparently some people found this film to be unfunny. I fail to see how, but it just proves that you can't please everyone. I watched this with my sister and she was unimpressed. For me, the film gets funnier the more I see it and the more I think about it. Undoubtedly, comedy has changed (compare the comedy of the 40's with the latest South Park episode), but I find there's still plenty of room for fun and romance in the movies. Check out the chemistry between Stanwyck and Fonda as he's lying in her arms....WOW! Pretty hot stuff for 1941. Lots of pratfalls, double takes, etc, so if that's not your bag, stay clear. Me, I'll take another helping, thanks.
Rating:
Summary: Still shimmering six dacades later
Review: In the important areas, "The Lady Eve" seems hardly to have aged a day. This is one of a handful of romantic comedies from the 1930s and 1040s by which all others before and after are measured. One reason is doesn't seem so dated is that it so much better than socres of imitations made since its release in 1941. While Henry Fonda is excellent as the rich, naive scientist whom Barbara Stanwyck's grifter / fortune hunting character is chasing after, one can still imagine another star, such as James Stewart, in the role The same thing can not be said of Stanwyck. She absolutely makes the role her own, and in the process, turns a very clever comedy into a timeless classic. The script is extremely well-written, with lots of lines requiring perfect comic timing. Director Preston Sturges makes it all look effortless, but the scenario and the dialog would have proved [and has proved!] disastrous in lesser hands. Naturally, the movie was made under the heavy-handed and sometimes Draconian moral production code in force at the time.'The Lady Eve' is hilariously subversive in the way it goes to the very limits of the code's rules. As a result, it ironically is far more sophisticated and clever than the majority of today's comedies. Compare the movie's very long scene in which Stanwyck play with Fonda's hair to any of today's 'Look! We're in bed together' scenes, and you'll see what I mean. [I don't care that couples are shown in bed together nowadays. It's just that there are other ways to make the same points.] My favorite segment? The one in which Fonda proposes to Stanwyck as they stand gazing at a lovely sunset. His ditzy, rambling speech is one of the funniest parodies of romantic scenes I have ever heard. And whose brilliantly demented idea was it to put that happy, friendly horse in the background? What funnier way to point out what a horse's [rear] our hero is making of himself?
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