Reviews by JxSxPx

Backyard musical number two from Mickey and Judy, Strike Up the Band is bigger than Babes in Arms but not necessarily better. Make no mistake, this is a hugely entertaining affair with some delightful set pieces and a fun group of supporting players, but a certain sense of proportion starts to weigh the film down. The expediency of Babes in Arms is sorely missed as Strike Up the Band loses energy the longer it goes on.

This one finds the wholesome twosome starting a high school band, entering a competition to meet a big-time band leader, but oh no, one of their classmates falls sick and needs an emergency procedure. Will these kids find a way to both save their friend and make it to Chicago for the big competition? If there was ever any doubt about the happily ever after outcome, then you must be new to these movies. I envy you; you’re getting to experience the joyful noise and megawatt energy of these two overachievers demonstrating the full range of their talents.

The major problems with Strike Up the Band is not knowing when to edit and limit excesses. This sounds like a strange criticism of a musical, especially an MGM musical right on the cusp of the genre’s strongest run of films and stars, but some of the best musicals know when to scale it back. For instance, June Preisser’s role as romantic and artistic rival for Garland was much better in Babes in Arms. In that film her presence was a logical extension of the plot, but she feels shoehorned in here as though what worked prior was simply replicated without thought put into the ‘why’ of it.

A similar thing happens with the backyard musical within the film, “Nell from New Rochelle.” It’s fun to watch Garland, Rooney, and William Tracy ham it up in a vaudevillian morality play, but it just keeps dragging on long after the cutesy charms have worn off. I am impressed that a group of high school students were able to cobble this together. It’s improbable even by the already improbable standards of a movie from the Dream Factory.

Let’s focus on the good now. “Do the La Conga” is enthralling and energetic as Mickey and Judy perform an exaggerated version of the dance. There’s also the stop-motion fruit orchestra of “Our Love Affair” that’s as strange as it is enchanting. “Drummer Boy” finds Rooney displaying his talents for drumming and playing the xylophone. Then there’s the outrageous finale of “Strike Up the Band” that drops any pretense of reality, no matter how feeble, and goes full-scale musical fantasy world.

It’s in these various moments that Strike Up the Band engages the audience as thoroughly as possible. These kids come to represent America’s can-do spirit, as mythical as nearly anything else in the film, and provided a balm for a scarred national psyche as Pearl Harbor and World War II were right around the corner and the Depression slowly unwinding. It’s a ball to spend time in the fantasy world where enough gumption can launch a pair of teenagers into big production numbers and fame. Of course, it doesn’t hurt if you’re Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney.

The original Brother Bear was a neutral object that never quite justified its existence and was like watching studio groupthink in action. Three years later comes a direct-to-video sequel, imaginatively titled Brother Bear 2, and it’s just as much of an indifferent object as the first. Hell, this one loses its movie star, Joaquin Phoenix, for a TV performer on a comeback, Patrick Dempsey, and a pop star mid-transformation into an actress, Mandy Moore. It’s this spirit of settling that pervades throughout Brother Bear 2. If you enjoyed those Canadian moose from the first film, then here’s an entire subplot about them trying to romance a pair of females, played by SCTV alumni Catherine O’Hara and Andrea Martin. I guess this one is as good as the original, or maybe a little better? I don’t know, honestly, as spending more time with this group of characters was an indifferent proposition from the jump. So, here’s a romance where the female gets turned into the beast and it expands upon the main character’s (human) backstory with plenty of stuff about the great spirits and not a single native voice actor to be found.   

A bit of a noir-by-numbers, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t enjoy the thrill ride of Drive a Crooked Road. Sure, the plot is the basic building blocks of a film noir, but it’s nice little B-level entry in Mickey Rooney’s filmography that careens through its brief running time with no fat on the bones and a strange little ending. I doubt anyone will ever mistake this for a stellar entry in the noir canon, but it’s a nice little minor discovery.

Rooney plays a lonely auto mechanic that becomes the patsy for a femme fatale (Dianne Foster) and her wannabe bank robber beau (Kevin McCarthy). You can guess where it’s going: femme fatale temps Rooney, introduces him to bank robber beau, and then slowly introduces him to their criminal plans. It zips through these story beats with surprising economy and a slow burning performance from Rooney.

No megawatt theatrics from Rooney here, but an authentic depiction of loneliness, world-weariness, and romantic isolation. He makes a great dupe, and I watched this as a double with Babes in Arms. If you ever wanted to see a demonstration of Rooney’s range as an actor, then I couldn’t think of a better or odder pairing. The effervescent, eternally youthful performer that chewed the scenery is nowhere to be found here.

Where Drive a Crooked Road stumbles is in its ending. Foster’s femme fatale gets a complete arc as she grows a conscience and feels terrible about the entire plot and helping to set it into motion. Foster’s biggest transformation is in her relationship with Rooney. Her revelation that she used him but feels terrible about it is a nice payoff from the private moments we’ve seen so far, but Rooney’s dupe never gets one. He seems to stumble into his comeuppance instead of engineering his revenge. It’s an upending of noir’s conventions while also feeling a bit like a spinout near the finish line.   

I suppose this is a noir film, in a mild sense, but its so bonkers and esoteric in its story beats that it quickly veers into horror proximity. So Dark the Night, director Joseph H. Lewis’ sophomore slump, is a weird, shapeless thing.

I’m not sure if its pretentions or what, but So Dark the Night begins as a mere detective number set in France with disparate parts that never quite come together. Then there’s the slow unraveling of the killer’s identity and a character’s crumbling psychological state, which are a Venn diagram situation, that feels at odds with the love story introduction. It’s a perpetual bait-and-switch situation that never quite finds a coherent scenario to build upon.

So Dark the Night feels far more like a story built upon maximum shock appeal and fractured identities. It’s not that we’re asked to sympathize with a potential killer that put me off, there’s plenty of stories that ask this of us, but there’s no hold on the character for us to grasp. It’s an odd film but not an unenjoyable one. It’s parts are great even if I’m unsure what they add up to or if they add up to something worthwhile.  

Less a traditional film noir than an arty psychological melodrama with a noir aesthetic, My Name is Julia Ross is a kindred spirit to the likes of Gaslight and Rebecca. While it distinctly ranks as the bronze medalist between the trio, My Name is Julia Ross is still a solidly made thriller.

Sometimes budget constraints can cause films to either flourish or flounder. The works of producer Val Lewton are perfect demonstrations of what a thin budget, but a lot of atmosphere and inky shadows can go a long way in a visual medium to strengthening the full work. My Name is Julia Ross has plenty in common with those films with its propulsive story, heavily shadowed interiors, and unsteady psychological atmospherics.

Julia Ross (Nina Foch) lands a job with a wealthy family, and is promptly kidnapped, quarantined away, and gaslit into thinking she’s Marion, the wife of Ralph Hughes (George Macready) who died mysteriously. Ralph’s domineering mother, Mrs. Hughes (Dame May Whitty), appears all docile and sweet to everyone but is the twisted engineer of Julia’s psychological torture and imprisonment. Julia’s a bit of a cypher, we only learn enough about her to care before she’s whisked away and treated as an empty vessel for the Hughes’ familial strife and poisonous worldview.

Its in Nina Foch’s central performance that much of Julia Ross gets its power. Her paranoia at the persistent manipulation is registered by Foch’s eyes continually searching for someone to believe her. Her desperation in escaping this fate and conundrum is all over her face and quivering voice.

As Julia Ross comes to its close, a bit of like watching someone willingly trade one imprisonment for another, you realize that this has been an incredibly effective and bustling 65-minute journey. No room for fat, this is a lean, mean, no bullshitting machine. Everything works and its streamlined efficiency is a marvel of B-movie engineering.   

1939 truly was a golden year for the studio era and for American film. Here is a bonafide classic filled with memorable musical moments, elaborate camerawork, a stunning juvenile performance from Judy Garland, and the whole thing runs so effortlessly and smoothly that it seems over just as it was starting. Not entirely surprising to discover this was MGM’s biggest money-maker of the year.

I’m sorry, did you think I was discussing The Wizard of Oz? Well, work on your surprised face because The Wizard of Oz was a notorious underperformer at the box office during its initial run, and Babes in Arms, Garland’s other great movie of 1939, is the one I’m settling in to talk about. While it doesn’t occupy the rarified space in the pop cultural landscape and collective imagination as Oz, Babes in Arms is a delightful classic in its own right.

The first of a series of Mickey and Judy’s “putting on a show” movies, and arguably one of the best simply for setting up the template and executing it so competently on the first try, Babes in Arms is a simple story told with economy. The children of retired vaudeville performers, Mickey and Judy are determined to prove that they can hold their own against their parents and maybe forsake getting sent to the state welfare home in the process. The old barn gets turned into a Broadway spectacle as two overachievers try to make their case as the brightest future stars of tomorrow.

Fact and fiction blur in that way here as Rooney was amid the Andy Hardy films and a Top Ten draw while Garland was slowly ascending from bit and supporting parts to leads and was primed for box office dominance shortly. If anyone’s plucky spirits could act as balm for the scarred national psyche, why not these two scrubbed clean nice kids?

Mickey and Judy’s fresh faces and can-do spirit are a prime symbol of American optimism as the Depression was ending. Don’t believe me? Check the final big number, “God’s Country,” where the stars softly, lovingly parody FDR and Eleanor and rattle off the virtues of Americana and the pop culture of the late 30s, including Greta Garbo and the Marx Brothers, as proof of exceptionalism. It’s far more charming and less jingoistic than that brief description would lead you to believe.  

If there’s a flaw in Babes in Arms, it’s the blackface scene. E tu Judy and Mickey? Even in the context of times, it’s hard to reconcile the burst of joyful energy and happy-go-lucky spirit that pervades with such an ugly reminder of the nation’s troubled racial history. It would be inaccurate to do something about vaudeville without the presence of minstrelsy, but I have a hard time squaring the violent history of the act with Mickey, Judy, and company performing it all with typical MGM smiles and show pony training.

It is mercifully over quickly as even God can’t seem to take it anymore and brings down a violent storm to end it all and washes the makeup from Rooney’s face. It’s a reminder of how difficult it can be to reexamine art through our modern context when it was made and digested in an era that didn’t view these images as harmful or cruel in a wider cultural sense. It doesn’t hinder my enjoyment of Babes in Arms, but it is a sequence I tend to flinch through.

Best to focus on happier, better aspects of the film instead, and there’s a lot. For instance, there’s the pleasing lead turns. Judy Garland’s already demonstrating her quaking vulnerability, natural talent for drama, astonishing and emotive singing voice, and ability to make hysteria appear as effortless and hilarious as breathing. 1939, in retrospect, was the coronation of Garland as Hollywood’s newest princess of the movies.

While Rooney got his first Oscar nomination. On the DVD’s introduction, he mentions this and asks for us to not laugh at the fact. Why would we laugh? Rooney, at his worst, could grate with a tremendous amount of energy that threatened to blow away the scenery, but he could dial down it when asked. Babes in Arms allows him to play for big, broad laughs, do some mimicry (very credible turns as Clark Gable and Lionel Barrymore), sing and dance, and get some big emotional scenes where he manages to dowse his gigantic flame to a low spark. Great acting isn’t always about appearing “naturalistic” on screen but finding the truth of any character. Rooney feels truthful to his character, and the line between actor and part is wonderfully blurry.

There’s relatively little to surprise you here plot wise, but who watches a studio era musical for the plot surprises? No, you watch something like this to watch two thoroughbreds in their element. Babes in Arms is buoyant, vibrant musical that finds two dewy youths displaying their considerable talents for your entertainment. Where their real lives end and their characters begin is a smudge line, and it’s all the better for it.  

It both seems entirely odd and somehow appropriate that Ernst Lubitsch’s yuletide romantic comedy, The Shop Around the Corner, would get the MGM musical makeover. While it is inferior to the original source material, In the Good Old Summertime is a solid, pleasing excursion through the story with Judy Garland and a few songs thrown in. Oh look, there’s an older Buster Keaton getting a chance to shine in a fun supporting part, too. With all of these ingredients, Summertime couldn’t help but be decent.

But it could have been so much more. Garland’s charismatic as ever, especially during “Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland” where she merely sits still while plucking a harp and singing or during “I Don’t Care” where she combines physical comedy with a jubilant reading of the song. She also makes her slapstick bits work wonderfully, like a scene where her dress gets torn off by Van Johnson’s bicycle. She’s a dynamo tearing up the screen even when the material isn’t quite up to her considerable talents.

It’s in her screen partner that things get wobbly. Van Johnson was a pleasant enough leading man for, say, Esther Williams, but his limitations are evident against Garland. It’s hard to believe them as a credible romantic pairing as so much of the film is spent having them argue instead of finding common ground. His wholesome boy-next-door appeal works well against Garland, but he’s not quite the screen comic or dramatic actor she was. It leaves the film a bit lopsided at various points as Garland, Keaton, and S.Z. Sakall out pace him throughout.

It’s all very sweet and charming more than it is romantic, hilarious, or splashy as a musical. It’s Buster Keaton, originally hired as a gag writer, that makes the most of the limited screen time afforded him. He comes up with a meet cute for the central characters that goes awry, the destruction of a violin that happens so smoothly you barely register it as a choreographed gag, and nearly does a pratfall down some stairs. Summertime had ample room for more of his talents, either through setting up the gags or performing them on his own.

Hell, In the Good Old Summertime has ample room for more song and dance. There’s relatively little of that here until the final stretch involving a big party and a barbershop quartet. It’s here that Garland joins the quartet for a fun “Put Your Arms Around Me, Honey” that lets her cut loose and be the vaudevillian performer she was in her bones. It’s clearly borrowing the vibe and aesthetic of Meet Me in St. Louis, and it needed some of that film’s breakout musical numbers to liven things up.

In the Good Old Summertime is notable mainly for its historical placement. This was Garland’s penultimate film for MGM, and her next, Summer Stock, would prove the starting point of the long unwinding of her career as a movie star. There’d be highs (1954’s A Star Is Born, 1963’s I Could Go on Singing), but it was mostly a slow descent into addiction, self-destructive behavior, and her premature death at age 47. It’s hard to look at how lovely and dewy she is here and think that in twenty years it would all come to a crashing halt.

In a happier note, there’s the first screen appearance of Liza Minnelli. She appears at all of three-years-old as Garland and Johnson’s daughter in the final scene. If she looks confused by it all here, that feeling wouldn’t last very long. Minnelli would rapidly go on to her own pop culture dominance and eventual EGOT (yes, I consider the honorary awards as valid).  

Still, this isn’t anywhere near the worst adaptation of this property. I’m looking at you, You’ve Got Mail. It’s safely middle-brow musical entertainment. Perfect for wasting away a lazy weekend afternoon.

Richard Jenkins, you’re a well-liked character actor with two Oscar nominations. What are you doing in this mess? Kim Basinger, you won an Oscar. I’m pretty confident you could do better than playing “the mom” to a high schooler in a generic sport’s drama. It’s a bit hilarious to watch Kelly Blatz and Analeigh Tipton try to convincingly play high school when they’re both clearly inching towards thirty. But they’re both photogenic and attractive, and that’s really all that counts. Oh look, there’s Cam Gigandet trying to prove he’s not just a pretty face. That’s debatable still as his performance here feel artificial and lacking in depth and conviction. 4 Minute Mile throws every underdog sports movie cliché in hopes it’ll resemble both a distinct personality and a narrative. It ends up feeling like a Frankenstein monster made by the worst parts of better movies.

Ah, these cornpone musicals are delightfully hokey and corny. I mean, here’s a big musical starring Judy Garland with a tagline about “how the fairer sex conquered the Old West!” Deep or memorable art this is not, but it’s a pleasant way to spend two hours.

The Harvey Girls offers up a story about a group of girls banding together to find a better life for themselves by working as waitresses in a corporate establishment. Ye olde gentrification zips into effect as the presence of the girls symbolizes an encroaching domesticity and respectability to the rock ‘em, sock ‘em Wild West.

If there’s anything that leaves a major distaste in your mouth, it’s the sense that The Harvey Girls views women in two forms: virgins and whores. That old complex is presented in the challenging dynamic between Garland and a brazen, tough Angela Lansbury as Em, the leader of the saloon girls. The makers want us to root for Garland, but Lansbury has so much fun with her bad girl part that we feel ourselves inadvertently rooting for her schemes and machinations. The ending is smart enough to allow for a note of complexity in Em and let her off the hook for their rivalry, even if it comes at the cost of Em leaving for parts unknown.

Even worse is the unbelievable love triangle. Lansbury and Garland sell their material well, even if Lansbury’s vocal dubbing is not convincing, but John Hodiak is dead weight. He’s more convincing as the duplicitous core to the town’s moral rot than as a romantic foil for good girl Judy. He’s tamed and made an honest man by the film’s end, but Hodiak is possibly Garland’s weakest leading man and least convincing song-and-dance man.

You’d think all of these strikes against the film would render my enjoyment of The Harvey Girls as nil, but it’s not so. The film knows it’s goofy balm for a post-war psyche and turns up the hokum to eleven. There’s the bravura technique on display during the thundering “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe” number that zips away from the rest of the film as a perfect piece of popcorn entertainment. Just as good is the low key “It’s a Great Big World” that finds Garland, Cyd Charisse, and Virginia O’Brien joining arms in sisterly solidarity against the knocks the wider world has given them. It’s touching and lovely for its combination of resilience and quietness.

The likes of O’Brien, Marjorie Main, and Ray Bolger add in some fun bits of color. O’Brien’s deadpan gets a humorous, cynical ditty in “The Wild, Wild West.” She promptly disappears from the film after this point due to Garland’s bad behavior and O’Brien’s growing pregnancy proving impossible to work around, but what a dry note to go out on. It’s generally sweet to see Garland and her rubber-legged scarecrow reunite on the big screen, and Bolger gets some cute bits to play in a smaller role. While Main delivers her gravely voiced, gruff mannered type, and I always welcome the sight of it.

No one will argue that is a high-water mark for anyone involved, but it’s an enjoyable B-list movie. This ersatz western town could only exist in the MGM dream factory, and even the just competent of those films offer up minor pleasures. Here’s Garland, the queen of the splashy Technicolor musical in fine form, surrounded by a pleasant enough score, reliable supporting players, and a silly script. What more do you need?   

For Me and My Gal is mainly remembered for two different reasons: Gene Kelly and Judy Garland. This was Kelly’s first film role, and it makes a stellar first impression, and a transitional role for Garland. Here she was changing over from the girl-next-door parts to an ingenue and taking on more grown-up parts.

It’s a bit of a goopy wartime musical/morale booster, but a very enjoyable one. A love story between vaudeville performers looking for their big break before the outbreak of World War I, For Me and My Gal is a bit routine in parts but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s plenty of morally gray spaces that the film inhibits, mainly in Kelly’s character who rapidly loses audience sympathy before working overtime to gain it back, to keep your attention even when the generic love triangle wobbles.

For Me and My Gal smartly spends most of its time either watching Kelly and Garland do the dramatics or rip it up in musical numbers. It’s hard to believe this was Kelly’s debut as he seems so self-assured and comfortable in front of the camera. His persona would tweak and finesse over the next few films, but all of the bones of it are there. Garland was apparently his biggest champion, not only in getting him the part but in coaching him on how to act for the camera, and their chemistry together crackles.

Not only do they verbally spar beautifully, but Garland manages to hold her own against Kelly’s dynamic physical movements. Not a natural dancer, Garland still finds a way to meet him in the middle just like Kelly’s tinnier voice finds a middle ground against Garland’s belting. Not only are they dynamic together, but separately they manage to enliven even the dullest of scenes, a few of which do creep in as the running time is a bit inflated.

Kelly’s character is a bit of a heel, and much of his trajectory is about him learning to care about something outside of himself. This is a character that breaks his hand to dodge the draft in a film released just as the US was gearing up to join the effort in World War II. That Kelly managed to not only essay a character this dark but manage to switch gears towards humbling him and engendering audience sympathy, and then go on to a bright career is no small feat. This would set the template for Kelly’s greatest screen creations: the tension between his infectious cheer (handsome smile, athletic dancing) and the dark underbelly (lovelorn sailor, forgotten man aboard, etc.).

Garland meanwhile demonstrates the full range of her talents: she gets to play comedy, melodrama, sing, and dance. Watching her in top shape is to watch a thoroughbred run a race. All you can think is, “wow, she was built for this. This is her element.” Daughter Liza Minnelli has often stated that her mother was the greatest entertainer to ever live, and it’d be easy to write that off as a progeny beaming with pride at their parent, but then you watch a string of Garland’s musicals and notice that she never breaks a sweat and makes all of it – the laughs, the singing, the drama – look effortless.

While the last act’s patriotism and aggressive flag waving can be a bit much, For Me and My Gal ultimately soars when merely viewing its leads bringing up the best in each other. Her vulnerability makes him softer, and his toughness makes her steelier, for instance. They’re clearly having a ball performing opposite each other, and it’s hard to not feel that charm and glee radiate off the screen and into your heart. While it may not be one of their golden classics, it is a resounding success at what it set out to do: let Garland grow up and give Kelly a chance with some tears, laughs, and songs along the way.