After Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were such a hit in the 1933 film Flying Down to Rio, RKO decided to pair them again in this effervescent musical comedy, wherein they could demonstrate once again their "distinct tendencies towards terpsichorean excellence." This time around, Astaire plays Guy Holden, an American dancer who falls in love with the beautiful Mimi (Rogers), who rebuffs his attentions. He's not one to take no for an answer, so he spends the next several weeks tracking her down. It turns out that she's actually married and wants a divorce, and she and her absentminded Aunt Hortense (Alice Brady) approach Guy's hapless lawyer friend Egbert (Edward Everett Horton) to effect the divorce. The plan is that she will check into a hotel with a "corespondent" and detectives will take pictures of them emerging in the morning, which is supposed to convince her husband to divorce her. But things don't ever work out exactly as planned in these films.

As far as musical comedies go, this one wasn't musical enough. There were only five dance numbers, and only two of them featured both Fred and Ginger. Fred gets two solo numbers: the abbreviated dance number "Don't Let It Bother You" and the enjoyable "Needle in a Haystack." I noticed for the first time that Fred makes some really strange faces when he's dancing alone. As for the two Fred and Ginger numbers, the overlong "The Continental" was acceptable, until it went on too long, but the ravishing Cole Porter–penned seduction song "Night and Day," the only number retained from the Broadway production, made up for anything the other numbers lacked.

The comedy angle is great, though. All of the best lines belong to Erik Rhodes, playing Rodolfo Tonetti, his usual Continental man-about-town, this time specializing in being the "other man" in divorce proceedings. The laughs start as soon as he enters the film; when Guy informs him that he'll be Tonetti's replacement, Tonetti replies, indignantly, "Are you a union man?" There's a lot of mileage to be had in his mangling of the pass-phrase by which he's supposed to identify his new employer, and his response to Egbert's admonition that "I want delicacy, tact, assurance, finesse" is priceless. Eric Blore has a funny, and a tad surreal, exchange with Egbert over his dinner order that had me chuckling.

Things worked out so well on this film that the producers decided to do it again, almost literally. Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Edward Everett Horton, Eric Blore, and Erik Rhodes appeared in this film, and they all appear in Top Hat, which was released the following year. That film was also directed by Mark Sandrich, and Helen Broderick, who plays Horton's wife in that film, was asked to play Alice Brady's role here, but she was unavailable. In addition, most of them play the same or similar parts. Blore is an ill-tempered servant (a waiter here, a butler in Top Hat); Rhodes is a patently silly European Lothario; Horton is Astaire's friend who's always a beat behind everyone else. Of course, Astaire always played the American dancer; only the names changed. In Top Hat, Rogers also played a dancer, which explained her ability to keep up with Astaire, but here there's really no explanation.

Which film is better? I guess it depends on which one you saw first; I saw Top Hat first, so I liked it better than this one, which seemed fairly repetitive. I didn't like the dance numbers as well in this one; for example, there's nothing to even approach the creativity of "Cheek to Cheek" or "Isn't It a Lovely Day." The big number in this film is the Busby Berkeley–esque "The Continental," which is (a) not a very good song and (b) not a very visually interesting dance. It didn't stop it from winning the inagural Oscar for Best Original Song, though. The whole thing feels more disjointed, especially the attempts to highlight the talents of some new starlets, Betty Grable and Lillian Miles, with musical numbers, though their characters aren't even named. However, there are some highlights that Top Hat doesn't have, most notably the pleasure of watching Edward Everett Horton attempt to sing and dance, hearing Erik Rhodes sing (and he's not bad), and one incredibly funny shot of Eric Blore sashaying his way up a staircase to the tune of "The Continental." And there's even a car chase in this one! But I've gone and convinced myself that Top Hat is, in fact, a better film than this one.

This film was nominated for five Oscars, but won only the Song award. It was also up for Picture, Art Direction, Sound Recording, and Score. It lost Best Picture to It Happened One Night, which is one of the greatest films ever made.