Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

MartinHafer The famous Broadway song and dance man, George M. Cohan, only made a couple films. So, seeing "The Phantom President" is one of the only ways you can see him acting. George plays two different people in this story. Theodore K. Blair is a rich guy who's in line to possibly be the next President. However, he's not very good at public speaking. But, when his campaign folks find a very charismatic medicine show man who looks EXACTLY like Blair, they get Peeter Varney to impersonate Blair on the campaign trail. Naturally, they want to keep this sort of thing out of the papers and don't even tell Varney's buddy (Jimmy Durante) nor Blair's girlfriend (Claudette Colbert)...which leads to all sorts of mix-ups. While Varney's help should be much appreciated, through the course of the film you start to see what sort of a skunk Blair is. In fact, instead of rewarding Varney for helping him become President, Blair plans on sending him off to a hellish reward near the North Pole! What's to become of this evil plan? See the film.While the music seemed a bit corny to me, I did enjoy the script and the film ended on a marvelous note. It's surprising, then, that this movie was a huge money-loser back in the day. I can't see why except, perhaps, by the 1930s, Cohan was a bit of a has-been...a relic of the past who was popular about twenty years earlier. Regardless, it's well worth your time and quite clever.

mark.waltz The presence of the legendary George M. Cohan is enough to spark interest in this political musical comedy that took potshots at the Hoover administration just like the Gershwins had done on Broadway the year before with "Of Thee I Sing". Broadway's song-writing team of Rodgers and Hart had gone Hollywood and wrote several rhythmic tunes for this variation of "The Prisoner of Zenda" which had a similar if more action packed theme of look-alikes in government. Of course, the American presidency would get similar skewing years later with Dave.The politician Cohan plays here is a rather unromantic square with designs on a former president's daughter Claudette Colbert. She finds him boring until one day she finds Cohan literally flying over her wall in trendier duds. Actually, he's the spitting image of the presidential wanna-be, a vaudevillian who tours with Mr. Schnozolla himself, Jimmy Durante. Political money-men spot him and get the idea of subbing him for the dull real deal in the campaign. Of course, the phony Cohan gets his own idea of how the country should be run which leads to further complications! After an interesting opening concerning portraits of former presidents commenting on history through song, the film moves to the present day and it is obvious that the writers are hoping for changes in the upcoming presidential election where F.D.R. took over for what seemed like an eternity. The political Cohen, they state, would be like a continuation of Hoover, and the vaudevillian Cohen more down to earth and promising, filled with Hope. Colbert gets to play a surprisingly calculating young woman who turns the tide on the staid politician, and Durante offers much amusement, especially in his song about his middle facial appendage. But it is Cohen who will obtain the curiosity here, and he does not disappoint.

nlangdon All the actors sparkle here, even Durante (who killed more than one MGM feature in his day) is a riot. Colbert is dazzling in every scene, even while bathing a dog. Cohan is fresh and fun, too bad he didn't make any other talkies. This production wreaks of Paramount, right down to the Lubitch touches of rhyming dialogue and animals delivering a musical number laced with sexual innuendo. In one instance the camera dissolves from the back side of a jackass to the keynote speaker of the Presidential convention; some things never change and it's still fresh!Will Hays would have had a lot to say about this production if he could have gotten his hands on it.... :)

rr19 This is the movie that DAVE was based on. Cohan is a song & dance man who is a double for the President - brought in to run for a second term, as the real President has no charisma. Durante is his sidekick.This film used to be shown a lot on TV, but has been AWOL the last 10 years as far as I can determine.Cohan's only film.