bmcdannell
Joined Sep 2004
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Reviews29
bmcdannell's rating
How can you lose? Eleanor Powell, Ann Sothern, Robert Young, Lionel Barrymore, Red Skelton, Virginia O'Brien, Phil Silvers, The Berry Brothers; songs by George and Ira Gershwin and Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II; production numbers by Busby Berkeley...what can possibly go wrong? As it turns out - a lot. Watching this movie is, in my experience, sort of like digging into your favorite steak dinner only to get the growing sense that there is definitely something off about the steak - and you know what the result of that is going to be. Or to offer another example, it reminds me of the story of a little boy waking up on Christmas morning to discover that Santa has left him a huge pile of manure. Nevertheless, he digs enthusiastically through the steaming pile, reasoning that there has to be a pony in there somewhere.
Yes, there are a couple of ponies in here - but you really have to wonder whether it's worth digging through all that manure to get to them. Let's talk about the ponies first:
If you manage to make it through the entire movie you'll find two outstanding numbers by Eleanor Powell, Ann Sothern's beautiful rendition of The Last Time I Saw Paris made particularly poignant by what was going on in Paris at the time this movie was made, and one of Busby Berkeley's more stunning productions near the end showcasing Powell's dancing and the wonderful Fascinating Rhythm by the Gershwin brothers. I gotta admit - that's a lot of ponies...and there's even more - a Powell dance routine accompanied by Buttons the dog who is said to have been trained for the number by Powell herself and the incredible athletics of the Berry Brothers.
But oh! the manure!
The story mounded over these gems absolutely reeks. Ann Sothern plays Dixie Donegan - a lyricist who seems to believe that the way to a man's heart is through serial divorces. Robert Young is Eddie Crane, a songwriter so enamored with his sudden success that he treats his on-again/off-again wife like a scullery maid while simultaneously mouthing his undying devotion. Never once do they even begin to address the conflicts that stand in the center of the story line in an attempt to resolve them. And their musical collaboration is portrayed as such a falling-off-a-log easy endeavor that Kern, Hammerstein and the Gershwins should all have sued for defamation.
Red Skelton's contribution consists primarily of a couple of trademark pratfalls and that's it - an utter waste of his talent. Virginia O'Brien, whose unique and peculiar talent we dearly love is showcased on one song that is about as suited to her style as a warthog is to a tuxedo (Ms. O'Brien being the tuxedo in this analogy - not the warthog). And don't even get me started on the Berry Brothers - their amazing athletics are set to music so completely inappropriate that it's like trying to watch Miley Cyrus twerk to Chopin. I could go on. The title tune is a good song but it is so overused that if you loved it when you sat down to watch this movie you will despise it by the time it's over. The repetition of this song, rendered in just about every style you can think of except perhaps as a Hawaiian war chant - turns it into a grating ear worm - and you know what that is like. And the body of music is itself jarring - you have the classics The Last Time I Saw Paris, Fascinating Rhythm and (the nearly Incinerated) Lady Be Good clashing in utter discord with clunkers like You'll Never Know (not the torch song you're probably familiar with) and Your Words and My Music.
We love the musicals of Hollywood's Golden Era. We cherish the body of performances by every star present in this movie. The talents of Kern, Hammerstein and the Gershwins are beyond compare. But it's all buried in such complete drek here that it's depressingly difficult to recommend the movie. And what's most depressing I think is that there are so very few really great Hollywood musicals from the era and this has every single pedigree you could wish for to be one of them. But it isn't. Yes, there are definitely ponies here. But only you can judge whether it's worth the agony of what you have to go through to get to them. Good luck.
Yes, there are a couple of ponies in here - but you really have to wonder whether it's worth digging through all that manure to get to them. Let's talk about the ponies first:
If you manage to make it through the entire movie you'll find two outstanding numbers by Eleanor Powell, Ann Sothern's beautiful rendition of The Last Time I Saw Paris made particularly poignant by what was going on in Paris at the time this movie was made, and one of Busby Berkeley's more stunning productions near the end showcasing Powell's dancing and the wonderful Fascinating Rhythm by the Gershwin brothers. I gotta admit - that's a lot of ponies...and there's even more - a Powell dance routine accompanied by Buttons the dog who is said to have been trained for the number by Powell herself and the incredible athletics of the Berry Brothers.
But oh! the manure!
The story mounded over these gems absolutely reeks. Ann Sothern plays Dixie Donegan - a lyricist who seems to believe that the way to a man's heart is through serial divorces. Robert Young is Eddie Crane, a songwriter so enamored with his sudden success that he treats his on-again/off-again wife like a scullery maid while simultaneously mouthing his undying devotion. Never once do they even begin to address the conflicts that stand in the center of the story line in an attempt to resolve them. And their musical collaboration is portrayed as such a falling-off-a-log easy endeavor that Kern, Hammerstein and the Gershwins should all have sued for defamation.
Red Skelton's contribution consists primarily of a couple of trademark pratfalls and that's it - an utter waste of his talent. Virginia O'Brien, whose unique and peculiar talent we dearly love is showcased on one song that is about as suited to her style as a warthog is to a tuxedo (Ms. O'Brien being the tuxedo in this analogy - not the warthog). And don't even get me started on the Berry Brothers - their amazing athletics are set to music so completely inappropriate that it's like trying to watch Miley Cyrus twerk to Chopin. I could go on. The title tune is a good song but it is so overused that if you loved it when you sat down to watch this movie you will despise it by the time it's over. The repetition of this song, rendered in just about every style you can think of except perhaps as a Hawaiian war chant - turns it into a grating ear worm - and you know what that is like. And the body of music is itself jarring - you have the classics The Last Time I Saw Paris, Fascinating Rhythm and (the nearly Incinerated) Lady Be Good clashing in utter discord with clunkers like You'll Never Know (not the torch song you're probably familiar with) and Your Words and My Music.
We love the musicals of Hollywood's Golden Era. We cherish the body of performances by every star present in this movie. The talents of Kern, Hammerstein and the Gershwins are beyond compare. But it's all buried in such complete drek here that it's depressingly difficult to recommend the movie. And what's most depressing I think is that there are so very few really great Hollywood musicals from the era and this has every single pedigree you could wish for to be one of them. But it isn't. Yes, there are definitely ponies here. But only you can judge whether it's worth the agony of what you have to go through to get to them. Good luck.
This came up on TCM the other night and was a movie neither my wife nor myself had ever encountered. Now that alone gives us pause, because we're both real fans of old movies - so if we've never heard of it chances are pretty good that it's going to be a real stinker. But it had Zasu Pitts and Edward Everett Horton and Ned Sparks and... I figured that with such a load of wonderful actors - even if it was bad - it would at least be interesting. So we recorded it and watched it last night. What a find! We laughed ourselves silly all the way through. If you're in to old movies you're going to see so many familiar faces playing the same characters they played in so many other movies and, as a result, doing it to perfection. The little things Zasu Pitts does with her hands are hilarious; and Ned Sparks interpreting Nat Pendleton's Brooklynese is wonderful. My favorite line from the movie, in all its euphemized glory, was, "How come there are so many more horses necks than there are horses?" I laughed my, um, neck off - and you can bet I'll be borrowing it and using it myself (in the non-euphemized version) often in the future. If it comes up in the listings again be sure to record it because - if you really like old movies - you're going to love this one - and you'll want to see it again.