The Kid from Spain

Eddie Cantor musical where a jittery simpleton is forced to cross the border to Mexico and pretend he is a matador. It's nothing special all told. Some of the jokes are funny, yes, but the whole is thin and I'm sure recycled from previous film and radio work.

What is of some interest, is that Busby Berkeley is here with his crafty engineering. Oh, both of his numbers feel tacky and have nothing to do with anything, which is more proof of zero vision behind this. Yet both numbers impress. Both are in that voluptuous mode he would cultivate in coming years: sexual tease, sparkle and shadowplay, the female body as the fulcrum of a continuously shifting erotic landscape. Eddie in blackface among Busby's radiant troupe feels crude and out of place.

He would be on to 42nd Street and history the next year.

Set in a girls' dormitory that looks more like a palace, it is astonishingly sexy, even by pre-code standards (you won't believe some of the innuendo they got away with); it is also one of the only two big production numbers that Busby Berkeley staged for this movie. Choreographically they're standard stuff compared to what he would do later in his career, but you can still spot glimpses of his genius. As for the rest of the movie, a very slight plot provides the framework for some funny moments (Mexican border standoff, "can you shoot me if I stand over here?", and what may be the first use of slow motion for comic purposes on the screen). **1/2 out of 4.

In the 1930s Eddie Cantor made a series of pleasant, sometimes sexy, consistently entertaining, fast paced comedies. This is, in my opinion, one of the better ones. The songs are wonderful, the gags are funny, the 1930's atmosphere is thick, and Eddie himself is so energetic throughout he seems to float.

It's a wonderful picture. Very recommended for 1930's film buffs and musical comedy enthusiasts.

If you loved Cantor's earlier precodes - "Whoopee" and "Palmy Days" - you'll like this one too. In my opinion it's not quite as good as his two prior film efforts, but there are still enough laughs and good musical numbers to make it worth your while. Cantor costars with a very young Robert Young as two college seniors who are expelled on the eve of their graduation. Young goes to Mexico to find the girl he loves, Eddie goes there as a result of being forced to drive a getaway car for a gang of bank robbers and thus being wanted. The two reunite across the border and the fun begins. There are two major complications in the plot - Eddie starts hitting people anytime he hears a whistle, and while in Mexico Eddie has taken on the identity of a great bullfighter in order to avoid arrest for the bank robbery of which he was an unwilling participant.

There are two big Berkeley numbers in the film, the first one being at the very beginning and bearing a great deal of similarity to "By a Waterfall" in Berkeley's film "Footlight Parade" of the following year.

I like Eddie Cantor movies. This is an early talkie and one of his best. It has two superb dance sequences from Busby Berkeley.

I'd have rated it an 8 but for the number done in black-face. Yes, I know that was fairly standard at the time. It grates today, though. The whole thing is fun. It's improbable but that can be the key to the charm of a Cantor movie.

Nevertheless, the highlight for me was his leading lady. I'd heard the name Lyda Roberti. Probably I've seen her before, too. But I was knocked out by her delightful comic performance. Here was a pretty woman, svelte and attractive, who was a topnotch comic. She presaged such greats as Joan Davis and Judy Canova.

I see she died young. What a loss to Hollywood then and to those of us who treasure vintage movies now! Lyda, you were sublime!