Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Donald Seymour This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Candida It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

utgard14 Enjoyable Pre-Code drama centering around activity in New York's famous Central Park. Of course, it's filmed mostly on sets with rear projection effects used to place it in the park but it's not cheesy or anything distracting. The primary focus of the plot is on a couple of young jobless people (Joan Blondell, Wallace Ford) getting mixed up with gangster Harold Huber and his associates. There's also some interesting side stuff going on with Guy Kibbee as an aging policeman with bad eyesight and John Wray as an escaped lunatic who unleashes a lion in the park. Kibbee's got a week to go until he can retire. We know what that means in modern films but does it mean the same in a movie made in 1932? Watch and see. It's a good B movie that gives you a look back at Depression-era New York. That little slice of history, coupled with a short runtime, some exciting action scenes, and a quality Warner Bros. cast makes this one classic film fans will want to seek out.

marcslope A Warners B that crams a lot into just under an hour, and belongs to no genre. It's a comedy! It's a tragedy! It's a drama! It's Warner Brothers social consciousness! Joan Blondell and Wallace Ford, both unemployed and living in the titular park, meet, flirt, and get into adventures, mostly involving her being hired by thugs posing as cops to help throw a charity event at the Central Park Casino. Meanwhile, in the Central Park Zoo, a keeper is abusing a lion, and is about to be confronted by a former colleague, who has escaped from the loony bin. So we've got gangsters, Depression romance, a sympathetic cop going blind (Guy Kibbee, plunging deeper than usual), and a lion loose in the park. It's fast and lively, far livelier than the usual output of John Adolfi, who tended to drag scenes out. It may have been filmed in Burbank, but the combination of stock footage and studio footage is expertly assembled, and the mad-lion sequences are satisfyingly frightening--I wouldn't be surprised to learn that extras were harmed during the making. Blondell is in her beguiling sexy-sassy mode, and Ford may not have been her strongest lead ever, but he gives good Forgotten Man.

kidboots Joan Blondell was always surprised to see James Cagney, her friend from Broadway days, become such a movie success but Joan could well have become a big star also if she had made fame her main motivation. As it was she was always happy and willing to do any movie Warners gave her, even starting one before she had finished the last, she just wasn't that choosy!! The public soon fell in love with her sassy character and were rewarded by seeing her in so many movies!!Even though theatre managers were often encouraged to put on phoney stunts and demonstrations to coincide with new movie releases they wanted to publicize, this movie had so much going for it that the author Ward Morehouse created parties and parades especially for it. Producers of some recent agonizingly boring epics should turn to films like "Central Park" for inspiration - but they probably won't!! There is more action and plot in just under 58 minutes - gangsters, romance, wild animals, all set in Central Park - they even once had a Casino there!!!Dot (Blondell) is an out of work actress and Rick (Wallace Ford) a rodeo star from Arizona who do a little flirting by a hot dog stand in Central Park. They are both from the vast army of the unemployed but their luck is soon to change. Dot is approached by two men claiming to be policemen, they want her for some mysterious undercover work because of her good looks and Rick, because he was helpful to soon to be retired policeman Charley Cabot (Guy Kibbee) is given the job of washing the police motorcycles (for the princely sum of $2!!). Charley has a secret - he is going blind but because he is desperate to retire with a pension the only person who knows is Eby (Henry B. Walthall, playing with his usual dignity, in a minor role). So when he comes across Robert Smiley, an ex-lion keeper who has just escaped from an insane asylum, all he sees is a blur and he mistakes him for one of the other keepers. Smiley has an insane hatred of people who are cruel to animals and he has come back to see Luke (the usually docile Charles Sellon), a keeper who hates wild animals and takes great delight in teasing them, get his just desserts!!Meanwhile Dot has been employed as a beauty contest winner who is to help the "police" "look after" the money from a society dinner where guests have paid $100 a ticket - the money is to go towards helping the unemployed. Rick get suspicious when he overhears a conversation and is taken to the gangsters apartment where his skills as a rodeo performer come in handy.All the action takes place during a single day (and night) and climaxes with the escape of a lion who terrorizes the patrons of the Casino. Blondell does her usual sterling job and Wallace Ford proves, once again, he was a really under rated leading man, excelling at the "working class hero" parts!!

ChorusGirl Set entirely in Central Park (albiet a studio bound, rear projection version of it), this is one of Warner's most fascinating 60-minute lightning rounds, with Joan Blondell as the out of work Roxy usherette who gets caught up with gangsters (in her first scene she steals a hot dog from a vendor, out of starvation). On hand are Wallace Ford as the "Forgotten Man" who falls for her, Guy Kibbee as a Central Park cop, and John Wray as a sociopath on the loose.If that isn't enough plot for an hour, there's a lion that escapes from the Central Park Zoo, and I don't know if it's special effects or just brilliant editing, but I'd swear that the extras and stunt men where REALLY put in harm's way with this animal, especially in the horrifying scene in the cage.I have to address another reviewer's question about the "appeal of Joan Blondell." I totally disagree. Blondell's pre-code output is worthy of its own book. She was a master of rapid fire dialogue and wisecracks, with excellent comic timing. She instilled energy into films that are now unimaginable without her (GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933, NIGHT NURSE, BIG CITY BLUES, DAMES, etc), and if nothing else was the best co-star James Cagney ever had (BLONDE CRAZY, FOOTLIGHT PARADE, HE WAS HER MAN). I'd vote that her performances survive intact, and haven't dated a bit in 75 years (which I cant say for Garbo, Shearer, Crawford and some other shining lights of the era).