After watching this on one of the local PBS station's digital channels and reading through other reviews I felt I should add one as well. I found this movie to be very funny, and not all in ways it was intended to be. I generally don't care for musicals, yet I enjoyed this movie.
Simply because it's old and somewhat dated, some lines are funny now that weren't necessarily intended to be then. But the jokes and some of the other lines aren't bad. From what I gather, these movies were made to be the warm-up act for other features, so if you're expecting Oscar-worthy material, you'll be disappointed. Taken for what it is, though, a sort of cheesy drag comedy, it's not too bad; it's certainly more watchable than some other films done around the same theme. You need some suspension of disbelief, but even there it's not too bad.
I suspect they played with the script here and there to give screen time to feature particular actors - Kent Rogers' scene where he does a Charlie McCarthy impression particularly seems tacked on for the relatively simple task he performs while doing this (which I won't spoil).
Towards the end you find out where Lady Gaga must have gotten her inspiration, some of the costumes in the girls' show are so preposterous I was laughing at them as well. Which more than likely was intentional. Most are only seen for a short time, I would imagine because much movement in them is not possible.
And I'm not sure I understand what is particularly racist about the scenes featuring black actors. At least from my understanding the jobs they're shown holding wouldn't be unusual for real African-Americans to have during those times; and the scenes involving the washerwoman you could just as easily substitute a ditsy blonde woman (say along the lines of Betty White's character in The Golden Girls) and it would still work. Perhaps people see this and feel it's a slight to all blacks implying they're dumb, but dumbness doesn't know race, and I've known real people who are ditsy enough you might be able to play that scene in real life and get away with it. The only thing that I see that's stereotypical is their dialog and that's just a product of the era.
It's somewhat amusing to see Alan Hale Jr. in a role more along the lines of what Bob Denver would later play in Gilligan's Island, while Noah Beery behaves more like the Skipper would.
