ZOO IN BUDAPEST (1933)

A whimsical romance, shot in gauzy soft-focus with some nice trimmings along the way but not much substance. Gene Raymond is a zookeeper in Budapest; he's a bit on the youthful eccentric side, always in trouble for punishing folks who don't take the animals seriously, like when he steals a fur from a visiting woman. Loretta Young is an orphan, just turned 18 and about to be forced into work; she's been planning an escape during one of the orphanage's zoo trips and finally her friends talk her into going through with it. Raymond, who has been flirting with her for some time, helps her hide after closing hours. Complicating things for the couple is a child who escapes from his nanny and gets lost in the zoo. Soon a full-scale search for all three is underway and in the last third, the movie becomes sort of an animal disaster film with maurauding tigers threatening our trio, along with a disgruntled co-worker of Raymond's (Paul Fix). Raymond looks the part, all blondness and smiles, and Young is fine, but the whimsey that should be applied with a light touch winds up feeling awfully forced. O. P. Heggie is the zoo director who has some empathy for Raymond; Margaret Hamilton has a couple of lines as the orphanage director's assistant. The cinematography is nice, giving the film a unique fairy tale atmosphere, but the whole thing is too heavy-handed to really succeed.