jaynashvil

You can't expect much in style or audio quality from 1929 talkies, but this may be the worst recorded audio I've heard from this era. The mics are 50 feet away and sound like it. You can barely hear, much less make out, Rudy's vocals, and the room has the ambiance of an airplane hangar. The band supplies shouting vocals for the second tune, but their voices are also unintelligible. Considering how fussy we hear those early sound engineers were, it's hard to understand how this recording passed muster.

Visually, it's just two shots--a wide and a medium--and they don't change for a minute or two at a time. It's a sad project, even for this early period.

I glanced over the reviews here and kept seeing complaints about this movie having nothing but "gay stereotypes." I'm not convinced ANY of these people actually WATCHED the film because the stereotypes are ridiculed mercilessly. This movie is a comedy and it runs all lgbt "types" through the ringer. There are a lot of laughs to be had--and a lot of them are quite raunchy, so prudes should beware. As for Billy Eichner, his character is very irritating, but he's supposed to be. We see how he's thrown up this wall to protect himself, but finally he eases us a bit and meets an absolutely adorable man. I teared up at the ending, which was no surprise. Enjoy some laughs and some happy.

I stumbled across this film on Turner knowing nothing about the plot, so I didn't know where it was heading. (I'm fascinated by the early talkies, good or bad.) Unfortunately, I found this one very slow going. Like so many films of this era, everyone stands around and talks and then talks some more, and they do it in a scenery-chewing style that reminds me of the spoofs on "The Carol Burnett Show." The overplaying is combined with some very slow pacing and a script that repeats everything in case you missed it the first three times it was said. Leslie Howard's character, in particular, raves excessively about their fate as the other passengers repeatedly scoff at him. We get the point, already. Yes, I know this is Howard's first film, but I didn't believe for a second that he was panicked. His histrionics seemed very insincere to me, especially in the scene when he lunges at the reverend; Howard seems as limp as a wet towel, waving his arms in the general direction of the pastor. Regarding the cinematography, there are some very nice shots here and there, but mostly it's shot in the three-camera sitcom style with players occasionally walking in front of the person talking and unintentionally blocking them from view. By this time, they really could do a better job if the director has stepped up to the plate.