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Old 06-21-2018, 07:17 PM   #261
sabotai
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: The Satellite of Love
Footlight Parade (1933)



Directed By: Lloyd Bacon, Busby Berkeley
Written By: Manuel Seff, James Seymour
Starring: James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell
Length: 102 min.
Genre: Musical Comedy


This is a talking picture about how a musical director deals with how the talking pictures are destroying musical theater.

Chester Kent (James Cagney) gets an idea on how to 'mass produce' prologues, short live musicals put on before the movie begins. He works constantly and his partners are hiding the profits. On top of that, their main rival keeps stealing his ideas.

Nan (Joan Blondell), his secretary, is in love with him. But when Kent meets her roommate, he falls for the roommate. Nan didn't hold back the insults at her throughout the movie either. "As long as there are sidewalks, you'll have a job." = how I know this is a pre-Code movie.

Once again Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell play supporting characters who end up falling in love.

The business is on the verge of collapse, but they have one last chance. They need to impress an owner of a chain of theaters to buy their prologues with 3 performances in one night. Kent locks everyone in the practice theater to prevent leaks and they practice night and day.

Nan finds out about the partners stealing from her boss, so she blackmails them to help Kent out of a bind (his ex-wife who isn't technically an ex-wfie showed up demanding money). But then she turns around and tells Kent about his partners stealing form him, and he does not take the news well. And Nan's roommate who Kent fell for? Yeah, she was just in it for the money and Kent eventually realized that. He storms out in the middle of practices, but returns soon after as he's struck by inspiration. The exhausting practices become even more exhausting until the night of the performances.

And that's when, if you're not a fan of musicals, this film comes to a total screeching halt. Up until this point, the movie wasn't really a musical at all. Some brief singing here and there, but no musical numbers at all. I was rather enjoying the movie. A lot.

The last half hour or so was nothing but 3 back-to-back-to-back long ass musical numbers. It certainly didn't help that the first one called "Honeymoon Hotel" was by far the worst of three IMO. That started this half-marathon of musical performances off on a bad foot. The second, "By the Waterfall" was okay. The third, called "Shanghai Lil", features Cagney singing as his character went on instead of the main singer who refused to perform because he was too drunk.

So really, this was a 70 minute long movie with 30 minutes of musical performances at the end. Other than successfully impressing the theater owner at the end, absolutely nothing of narrative importance happens in the last 30 minutes. The first 70 minutes were great, the last 30 was a total drag.

The movie was a massive success though. Without the revenue generated by 42nd Street, The Gold Diggers of 1933 and Footlight Parade, there wouldn't be a Warner Bros. today.

My Rating: 6/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.7/10 (3k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 100% of Critics (9-0), 83% of Audience (3.9 / 5 ; 1k votes)
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