Banana split

No doubt about it, the movie's a cast of characters collected in someone's goofy heaven—Carmen Miranda, Busby Berkeley, and Edward Everett Horton, all together in one padded cell. Throw in leggy Charlotte Greenwood and froggy Eugene Palette, and there's enough colorful types for ten musicals. Aside from the conventional plot, this 1943 trip to bizzaroland doesn't disappoint for sheer wackiness.

Of course, there's Miranda's infamous arching bananas replete with the recumbent girls, all of which could have sent Dr. Freud into terminal overload. Really, how the carnally obsessed Berkeley managed to stay this side of the censor is still puzzling. And catch that final number with the disembodied heads and Palette croaking out a song. I'm just wondering what Berkeley's dreams were like. They couldn't be any weirder than what's there on the screen.

Then there's the top of Miranda's head sporting more pointy architecture than the Manhattan skyline. And catch her wardrobe—somewhere there's a dozen circus clowns without their costumes. After that, add a few lines of her hilariously fractured English, and she's a whole wonderful show in herself. Too bad her personal life was apparently so unhappy.

Great color photography, along with a soulful Alice Faye. Even the pretty much unknown James Ellison seems a good stand-in for the boys in uniform. No doubt about it, Hollywood knew how to concoct lively and engaging wartime shows. But just as importantly, these concoctions still entertain decades later, even with an inspired lunatic like Busby Berkeley in charge.