I would love to spend this entire review quoting the silliest screenplay ever to grace a Polynesian adventure epic. While Dorothy Lamour's presence makes sense (she's certainly lovely in one of her thousand screen sarongs), reunited with "The Hurricane" co-star Jon Hall for this colorful yarn of an American educated Polynesian prince coming back to modernize his country, the supporting cast will have you in stitches.
Someone at Paramount must have thought that the idea of putting stern looking character actress Esther Dale into dark make-up and casting her as a Bloody Mary type role would be funny, and it is...as a sick joke. When Dale and other characters start spouting dialog so trite that it sounds like you're being beaten over the head with a Hallmark card, you have to make yourself stop laughing just so you can hear every silly line they say. From a camp viewpoint, this comes with the laughs of a thousand hyenas (just to give you a glint into of what kind of dialog to expect) is pleasant to look at, but also feels some really dreary secondary characters.
Ultimately, this is the type of film that seems to probably have better as a silent film, where audiences expected lavish visuals and over-the-top dialog in the titles. To hear it points out how infantile it really is. Still, if you're not crying from laughing by the end, you will be excited by the excellent special effects which erupt towards the end.
Someone at Paramount must have thought that the idea of putting stern looking character actress Esther Dale into dark make-up and casting her as a Bloody Mary type role would be funny, and it is...as a sick joke. When Dale and other characters start spouting dialog so trite that it sounds like you're being beaten over the head with a Hallmark card, you have to make yourself stop laughing just so you can hear every silly line they say. From a camp viewpoint, this comes with the laughs of a thousand hyenas (just to give you a glint into of what kind of dialog to expect) is pleasant to look at, but also feels some really dreary secondary characters.
Ultimately, this is the type of film that seems to probably have better as a silent film, where audiences expected lavish visuals and over-the-top dialog in the titles. To hear it points out how infantile it really is. Still, if you're not crying from laughing by the end, you will be excited by the excellent special effects which erupt towards the end.