A Slight Case of Murder (1938)

Directed by Lloyd Bacon
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Warner Bros)

Edward G. Robinson plays his gangster persona for laughs, and for the most part it doesn't work. I went into the film thinking it was a serious gangster drama, and it took about half of it to realize it was supposed to be a comedy. The highlight is the speech given by Robinson at an orphanage on the nature of "success", truly a classic scene as he spices it up with gangster slang. Mostly though it's Robinson and his wife Jane Bryan trying to act high society with their old gang.