YMMV / Dinner at Eight

• Best Known for the Fanservice: You'd think this movie consists of Jean Harlow in a Sexy Backless Outfit and nothing else, but it's one of the most memorable things about it.
• Broken Base: On whether the blend of comedy and tragedy works or not. Some feel it fits within the tone of the story, others experience Mood Whiplash.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Per the course with any part Jean Harlow played, Kitty is one of the most remembered characters in the film.
  • Carlotta Vance comes close to equalling her in popularity, due to Marie Dressler's dry wit making her a Cool Old Lady.
  • Millicent has a lot of fans too, due to Billie Burke's Adorkable hysterics while planning the dinner.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Jean Harlow playing a hypochondriac who's constantly complaining of imaginary ailments, just a few years before her death from a kidney disorder at 26.
• Jerkass Woobie: Larry Renault, a proto Norma Desmond whose looks have faded, he's lapsed into alcoholism and can't even pay for his hotel room any more. It's hard to not feel sorry for him when he's Driven to Suicide.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "My skin's delicate and I don't dare expose it", turns around to reveal Sexy Backless Outfit.
  • "I read a book today", Carlotta does a Double Take in shock.
• The Scrappy: Paula, who's cheating on her fiancee with Renault. He shows remorse for this, but she doesn't. The movie tries to depict her sympathetically but it's still a silly girl cheating on a perfectly nice boy. Kitty avoids this, despite doing the same thing - as the movie goes out of its way to show that she and her husband are equally rotten people, and it's implied she's going to be blackmailed by her maid.
• Spiritual Successor: To Grand Hotel, the previous year's Best Picture winner, which not only employed a similar narrative structure but had some of the same actors playing similar parts (Lionel Barrymore as a sympathetic, terminally ill man, John Barrymore as a tragic figure who meets a sad end, Wallace Beery as an obnoxious Corrupt Corporate Executive).

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