Writing comments about a movie like this one is difficult. The plot and dialogue are atrocious, but the score and visuals are first rate. So one splits the difference and gives it a "5." As some of the few comments thus far have implied, it is a formulaic comedy with loads of prominent character actors of the time reprising roles already played in other movies and on the radio. Audiences in 1937 were for the most part captive to that sort of thing. Diversity of tastes like that of today just did not exist, and everyone going to the movies in small-town America was inclined to go along with the gag mainly because it was literally the only show in town.
When as a lad I paid my 9 cents admission at the box office, I knew I was going to sit through anything they threw at me, including the newsreel at the beginning, the same old cartoons, a dumb serial episode with someone falling off a moving train at the end -- to be continued -- and a main feature in black-and-white that depended more on stock characters and situations than on anything new or scandalous.
Now I watch these same features on Turner Classic Movies with moody nostalgia and total suspension of disbelief. So what if Nelson Eddy at nearly 40 was playing a cadet of half that age? And what about my now knowing that his off-screen person was 180 degrees off the roles he played? His singing is still mesmerizing, an operetta voice the likes of which disappeared ages ago -- indeed a relic of the Nineteenth Century. Even an uncharacteristically inferior Porter tune like "Rosalie" gets a high-class treatment.
Sure, there are better musicals from the 30's, but this one is a piece of history as well as a minor work of art.
When as a lad I paid my 9 cents admission at the box office, I knew I was going to sit through anything they threw at me, including the newsreel at the beginning, the same old cartoons, a dumb serial episode with someone falling off a moving train at the end -- to be continued -- and a main feature in black-and-white that depended more on stock characters and situations than on anything new or scandalous.
Now I watch these same features on Turner Classic Movies with moody nostalgia and total suspension of disbelief. So what if Nelson Eddy at nearly 40 was playing a cadet of half that age? And what about my now knowing that his off-screen person was 180 degrees off the roles he played? His singing is still mesmerizing, an operetta voice the likes of which disappeared ages ago -- indeed a relic of the Nineteenth Century. Even an uncharacteristically inferior Porter tune like "Rosalie" gets a high-class treatment.
Sure, there are better musicals from the 30's, but this one is a piece of history as well as a minor work of art.