ADAM AND EVIL
starring Lew Cody and Aileen Pringle
SCREENLAND
November, 1927
Nothing risqué, nothing gain, said Eve as she took the first bite. Apple, apple, who's got the apple? See "Adam and Evil" and acquire knowledge. It's a frisky farce with Lew Cody and Aileen Pringle as co-stars. And a good team, too.
The only moral in "Adam and Evil" is marry a twin; and that, you'll agree, isn't much of a moral. That's why "Adam and Evil is such good fun. Nobody worries about morals -- in fact, don't give a fig-leaf for 'em. Lew and Aileen are snappily married; and Lew's twin bother -- I mean brother -- happens along in time to make matrimony interesting after all. Yes, we see Mr. Cody twice as often as usual; but Mr. Cody, single or double, is always welcome. He's even funnier here. The double exposures come thick and fast. Aileen, as the lady who doesn't know her own mind, much less her own husband, is delightful. Gwen Lee as the blonde in the case -- and what is a case without one? -- is not only decorative; she's a scream. Hedda Hopper in the thankless role of a catty girl-friend will make you purr. Why doesn't some smart director hand the exquisite Hedda a real part once in a while? Now you ask one.
ADAM AND EVIL
starring Lew Cody and Aileen Pringle
MOTION PICTURE MAGAZINE
November, 1927
Although the plot is intricate and the titles are not so brisk as they might me, Aileen Pringle, Gwen Lee and Lew Cody, assisted by capable direction, make this an amusing picture. This seems to be the quintessence of critical opinion in new York. "Lew Cody . . . deserves the roars with which the audience greeted his assorted predicaments last night," says Donald Thompson, reviewing in the columns of the Telegram. Although finding "Adam and Evil" boisterous, rowdy and loaded with hokum, Mr. Thompson asserts that it is amusing. Mordaunt Hall, critic of the Times, pays the director a compliment, being of the opinion that "Mr. Leonard's direction of this feature is truly imaginative, even in such incidents wherein there are only telephone conversations . . . 'Adam and Evil' has a suggestion of French farce about it . . . One can have quite a happy afternoon or evening watching the obstacles poor Adam has to surmount all because he is mistaken . . . for his impecunious brother." "The new farce," says Quinn Martin in the World, "a typically wise-cracked Metro production of the second class . . . is so well acted , so lacking in seriousness or any effort toward the probabilities, that it is pretty good entertainment -- laughable at times and never afflicted with an implied sense of its importance. Mr. Cody most generally is a dependable actor, while Aileen Pringle, the first of the movie stars in which Madame Glyn found and isolated IT, is fair to look upon . . ." Herbert Cruikshank, the Morning Telegraph's critic, finds that "Adam and Evil" is a splendid vehicle for Lew Cody's talents and that the actor succeeds in extracting every last giggle out of his two parts. "Taken as a whole," says George Gerhard in a typical criticism of the picture in the Evening World, "'Adam and Evil' is entertaining but it cannot be taken very seriously."