Carnaval à Costa Rica

This 20th Century Fox musical has several problems, including an uneven script and uninspired choreography. However, the flaws are countered with some strengths. The color photography and costumes are lovely. And the cast is good, especially leading lady Vera-Ellen and Celeste Holm.

This 20th Century Fox musical really isn't very good, but if you like the cast, you can give it a try like I did. I love Vera-Ellen and always try her movies since she didn't make very many. Her talents really aren't utilized in this movie, though. Her dancing is down-played, her famous legs are hidden, she's given a dishwater-colored wig to make her look Costa Rican -What?- and for some unknown reason she's scrubbed clean of all her makeup. Without her eye makeup, she looks like Shirley Temple's homelier sister, instead of the made-up glamourous lady she usually plays.

The plot is funny, though. Vera-Ellen and Cesar Romero's families have arranged their marriage. They've never met, and she wants to be free to fall in love. Cesar already has a girlfriend, Celeste Holm, so he doesn't want to get married either. To thwart the engagement, he sets a plan to make himself repulsive to her so she'll call off the engagement. He wears dark glasses to take care of his watering eyes, stoops over, coughs incessantly due to an infected trachea, shuffles little steps because it's difficult for him to stand for long periods of time without getting tired, and asks for her help in taking his various pills because he's color-blind. It's very funny, but since Vera-Ellen's polite, she doesn't call things off.

At the carnival, though, she meets Dick Haymes and falls in love. She a ridiculous pick-up line and doesn't care about anything except his supposed pretty face. But what about Cesar Romero's pretty face? And what's wrong with these studios putting talented people in musicals and not letting them participate? In State Fair, trained opera singer Dana Andrews wasn't allowed to sing; and in Carnival in Costa Rica, trained ballroom dancer Cesar Romero wasn't allowed to dance. I didn't enjoy this one, but you can try it out and see if you like it.

Cesar was 40 when this movie was made, at least a decade and a half older than the character should be for an arranged marriage. It appears they tried to hide his age via makeup and hair dye, but these ruses are as convincing as happy, dirt-free coffee-pickers singing their way through a day of hot drudgery. Having said that, this movie, seen in January 2007 on the Fox Movie Channel, is surprisingly watchable. The costumes and dancing and songs are easy on the eyes. Cesar may be too old to play a young buck dealing with parents trying to arrange a marriage, but he is still the great Cesar Romero, of later fame as "The Joker" on Batman.

I found the movie humorous, fun and enjoyable but I can easily understand why my grandparents found it offensive. Being Costa Rican I have heard how the sections of the movie that were filmed in Costa Rica caused great commotion at the time even though none of the main actors came to the country (at least for filming). When the movie finally opened in Costa Rica people were upset of how the people and the country had been misrepresented. Even though the movie exerts attitudes and prejudices towards Latin America, as well as ignorance over the social and cultural differences between Latin American countries and Spain it reflects the ignorance (or innocence?) of the 1940s. At the end, for all the cultural improprieties doesn't make "Carnival in Costa Rica" any less enjoyable.

This is good to watch if only for Vera-Ellen, Celeste Holme, Ceasar Romero, J. Carrol Naish, Anne Revere, and especially, the great crooner Dick Haymes who had a marvelous voice and wasn't a bad actor either.....only the material was schlocky in this one. I would recommend Costa Rica use this for tourism!