Norma Shearer ended her film career on a less than stellar note with the forgettable Her Cardboard Lover. Although filmed twice before, the property has never worked especially well onscreen, perhaps least of all in this incarnation. The story is tired and filled with mechanisms we've all seen used to better effect elsewhere, and there's little in the dialogue that is fresh, enlivening or enlightening. Although director George Cukor is one of the most skilled practitioners of the light, continental touch that this kind of material requires, he is decidedly off his form here, offering direction that is generally dull and often leaden. The stars struggle mightily, but with little success. Norma Shearer has some effective moments, but the part calls for a younger woman, whose youthful exuberance and inexperience would help to make the plot turns more believable; with a mature woman in the role, it comes across as forced and artificial. George Sanders gets across a few zingers, but he does not seem very involved on the whole, and Robert Taylor is often at sea. There's some professional camerawork and a decent Franz Waxman score, but not much else to recommend Cardboard.