Let's Go Native

This musical comedy defies its own plot and meanders on its merry way from Broadway to an ocean liner headed for Brazil but gets sunk, shipwrecking the stars on a remote island inhabited by natives who have been turned into showgirls by the previous shipwreck victim! With that said, there's little point in trying to follow this film but just sit back and enjoy the funny and sexy Jeanette MacDonald (yes she sings too) as she is romanced by James Hall (he also sings). Hall is mostly forgotten now but was a big star in late silent and early talkies (HELL'S ANGELS). Jack Oakie does to production numbers that are lively and well edited. Kay Francis shows up as an heiress and sings the lovely (I've Got a Yen for You). On the island they meet Skeets Gallagher who has turned the local girls into showgirls (Virginia Bruce and Iris Adrian among them).

Also on hand are David Newell and and funny William Austin as Pistol. Then there's Eugene Palette as head of the moving crew that is repossessing MacDonald's furniture.

MacDonald, Oakie, and Francis are terrific.

This film has one redeeming grace- Jeanette MacDonald - whose grace, charm and star quality shine through every scene she is in - she takes this seriously, a sign of a great star!

There are few films as awful as this one: execrable acting, direction, script, cinematography, sound,editing,special effects - this is the PITS!!!!!!

Jeanette is a trouper, tried and true. Like Liz Taylor in Butterfield 8, - "when you know you're in a turkey, give it the best you got, you might be recognized"

Even Kay Francis is AWFUL - Oakie is embarrassing.

There are 5 songs/musical numbers. Oakie has 3 and Jeanette has 2 - one a duet. All are forgettable.

Available prints are washed out and blurry- maybe there is a God after all.

For MacDonald fans only - she only made 28 - to think Paramount actually released this debacle - if there was ever a case for shelving, this is it!

One would expect a great sophisticated farce with magical musical moments with a cast like Kay Francis, Jeanette MacDonald and Jack Oakie. However, things just chug along and most all transitional moments rely on tired slapstick. Jeanette sings a catchy tune at the beginning before leaving onboard for Buenos Aires, but that's it for her, except for a brief dance number. Kay Francis vamps on board ship and gets to duet with Jack Oakie "I've Gotta Yen For You". Oakie is full of his usual pep -- really, they're all in their prime here, it's just a miserable script and poorly directed, by of all people, Leo McCarey. who did BELLE OF THE NINETIES,DUCK SOUP, RUGGLES OF REDGAP,THE AWFUL TRUTH(!) and AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER. What, I wonder, happened here? Only for diehard Francis and MacDonald fans.

I imagine that the average film fan would tell you their leg was being pulled if you told them that Jeanette MacDonald, Jack Oakie, and Kay Francis were the leads in the same film. At the time that Let's Go Native was being made all three were newly signed to Paramount, new because all three of them had their careers made by sound.

Let's Go Native has Jeanette in the role of a dress designer with a cash flow problem. She's just designed a bunch of costumes for a review, but she's sunk all her money into it and the creditors and remember this is the Depression, are at her door. The only way she can get paid is go to Buenos Aires and get her money there.

Also on the cruise are a taxi driver who's taking it on the lam in order to avoid being sued for an accident and that would be Jack Oakie. And there's society girl Kay Francis and young millionaire James Hall whose father has been contriving to get those two married.

A well staged shipwreck given the primitive early sound equipment strands our passengers on a deserted Virgin Island, presided over by Skeets Gallagher and a troop of native women. Everybody then settles down and plays house.

Leo McCarey directed Let's Go Native who later directed some comedy classics like Duck Soup, The Awful Truth, and Ruggles Of Red Gap. Let's Go Native is hardly in their class though it has its moments.

The score by Richard Whiting and George Marion is serviceable, but not memorable. Nothing here got in Jeanette MacDonald's concert repertoire. Jack Oakie has a couple of numbers he delivers with usual bumptious fashion.

Had there been such an Oscar category for special effects, the shipwreck and later earthquake might have gotten Let's Go Native an award. I believe some of the footage is later used in the Bing Crosby-Carole Lombard film, We're Not Dressing.

Let's Go Native is an amusing trifle, dated though and not up to what Leo McCarey later gave us.

It's an old line, for sure, but not the usual approach Kay Francis usually used in her romantic relationships. But this is not the usual Kay Francis film, as her role is secondary to Jeannette MacDonald and Jack Oakie in this delightfully silly romp from Paramount. It's a pre-code kind of film, with all kinds of humor in dubious taste, and thus quite appealing to viewers who enjoy a trip into an unrestrained Hollywood product.

There must have been something in the Paramount water in the early 30's, as once in a while they released something completely off-the-wall, full of very broad humor, eccentric stunts, wild dance moves, and plot absurdities--two prime examples were directed by Leo McCarey--this one, and three years later, the comic jewel Duck Soup, with all four Marx Brothers. In between, W.C. Fields starred in Million Dollar Legs, another screwy film taking place in Klopstockia, the nation where all the men are named George and the women are named Angela, and where the office of President is decided by arm wrestling.

In this film, absurdities abound, and if you like your humor more linear or sophisticated, the nonsense may not be appealing...native girls in hula skirts on a remote island speak with a "poifect Brooklyn accent," gravel-voiced Eugene Palette, a house mover, cautions his workers to handle with care, and then, naturally and continually inadvertently smashes vases to smithereens. Oakie breaks out in several tap routines with great charm and elan, and Jeanette seems to be having fun just along for the ride. It makes almost no sense at all, unlike say, Abbott and Costello or The Three Stooges, who at least follow a logical plot line, bordering if not crossing into the territory of surreal.

Unfortunately, sources where this film is available in a decent quality print do not exist, and the DVDs currently available are terribly washed out with fuzzy sound; one seems to be only to see it at Museum and College Retrospectives. It's time for whoever currently controls the early Paramount product to dig these things out--especially the early Kay Francis films not available.