Dogway Melody, The (1930)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
A mildly entertaining entry in MGM's Dogville series is a spoof of their THE Broadway MELODY from 1929. This time out, naturally, we have dogs spoofing that movie and for the most part the story here stays pretty close to that of the film its spoofing. This Dogville series is going to be love it or hate it but I'm somewhere in the middle as I find most of the films to be incredibly bad but at the same time they're so darn surreal and at times creepy that you can't help but watch them from start to finish in some sort of morbid fascination. I actually found this to be one of the better episodes especially if you've seen the film that they're spoofing. The spoof of Anita Page is pretty spot on and also quite funny. The highlight of the film would have to be when Al J. Olsen comes on stage to sing "Mammy". Of course, the film features a black dog just to fit in with the real actors most famous way of singing. Like most of the others, making this a two-reeler is somewhat pushing it as I'm sure the film would have moved and worked better at an eight or nine minute running time but if you're a fan of the series you'll want to check this one. If you've never seen a film from the series then you might as well start here.
