TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

edwagreen The songs are ridiculous. What Hitler is portrayed by a monkey, which is appropriate, the words were inane, especially when they kept saying his real last name- Shikelgruber.At his first song, Vaughan Monroe sounded as though he had his jaw wired. June Allyson belting out I Don't Recognize This Song was also inane, as the words were silly.As shown in your page, Lucy as Julie Hampton, was a Broadway star and not a Hollywood luminary. She is caught up with Dick Powell, a shipbuilder, who has written a play Meet the People. The two, of course, fall in love, but tangle over what kind of version his play should take, he wants it centered around the ship-builders and the people of war-time and she prefers a more glamorous rendition. He later accuses her of using the play for publicity. What was the headline about jobs being frozen causing the Ball character to remain among the ship-folk?Bert Lahr also appears, but his funniest scene is where a tuba practically goes on top of his nose.Silly fanfare with the predictable ending.

tedg The movies I choose to watch are sometimes suggested by events. Recently. I encountered yet another incomprehensible act by the American War Department and took refuge in this.It is from an era of justified involvement in a war. Death camps, master race.It is rank propaganda, subsidized by political leaders. It has other offenses. Blacks are shown twice: a man as a yassa porter and women happily picking cotton.And yet its charm is in the thing it celebrates. You likely will never see this. It is dated and not very good as a film. The strings it pulls... well, they're broken. So let me describe it.It features Lucille Ball before she made herself a joke. In this era, she was a desirable pinup, even at 33. She parades her legs and glamor as a famous stage actress. She meets and falls in love with a wartime shipworker who aspires to be a playwright. He, it turns out, has written a play featuring the good souls of the shipyard representing all the "ordinary people" of America who labored for the war effort, which at root was a competition of manufacturing infrastructures.That play is the device around which all sorts of narrative effects are folded. There's the bit which forms the plot: she likes the play and attempts to put it on. But it gets too glamorized for the author. It isn't "real" enough and rather than demean the subject, he forgoes wealth and fame and closes it down. She follows him back to work in the shipyard to charm him into letting the show go on. As scripted, she discovers and comes to appreciate the goodness of the honestly laboring people.At the end, she puts on the play as he intended it to be, at the shipyard. Inside the play's performance, he literally enters the play and reconciles with our girl. End of story.Along the way, there are an amazing number of other excuses pulled to have song and dance numbers. Its purpose, after all was to mix entertainment and "the message."So you have:—lunchtime shows at the shipyard (with Spike Jones and Hitler played by a chimp). Also, an evening show with several elaborate numbers.—a love song when the two go on their first date, the song half him demonstrating the song to her and half wooing her in the story by song.—a bit as if the movie were a musical comedy. In this case, the story itself bends into comic song as Burt Lahr's character christens his boat.—imitations of famous war leaders, performed randomly whenever a certain character appears. Some of these are unrecognizable today.And that's in addition to seeing bits of the title show in New York and the shipyard.A lot of entertainment. All the shows, every one, are miniature versions of the larger movie: celebrations of ordinary folk and then American values.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

mmhorvat I went into this movie hoping for the best. I like wartime musicals in general. Dick Powell and Lucille Ball did good jobs with their roles; however, the writers gave them boring dialog. The love-interest between the two of them was not given any real growth; just suddenly it was there. I did not think much of the music; the best number was the snippet we heard of Spike Jones with "Der Fuhrer's Face." The one complete number that Spike Jones did had little of his great musical comedy; pretty tame stuff,even with the monkey. Bert Lahr's comedy skits were interminable.There were parts to enjoy: Lucille Ball was quite a looker, and there was a good selection of bit players who really deserved more time on screen.

Lou Rugani This is typical wartime let's-pull-together propaganda, and it's very entertaining. A tour-de-force with a great cast, leading to a riotous "Heil, Schicklgruber!" sequence with the fabulous Spike Jones entourage, and a sieg-heiling chimpanzee as Adolf Hitler! It holds up well today as both great entertainment and as a glimpse into the national mood of the time. Highly recommended to all!