Caught this today on TCM. It's one of those run-of-the-mill early sound-era musicals that soured the public on singing films until the exciting 42ND STREET and the early Busby Berkeley extravaganzas pumped juice back into the musical genre.
Fazenda and her co-stars sing well in the operetta style that was still popular at this time, but their acting tends to be as stiff, stagy and clichéd as the story, dialog, and camera-work.
It's interesting to see the kind of brainless and virtually heartless musical comedy that was current when SHOW BOAT debuted on Broadway and then on film, pointing the way toward more heartfelt, substantial musicals in the future. Tastes in comedy change, but I doubt anyone found this one very funny even when it first appeared. The humor is really forced and lame.
The story is an ancestor of the teen comedies that would be popular decades later: a young jazz baby can't decide between two suitors, while her cranky, "old-fashioned" father and clueless mother provide comic relief.
Hit with a bunch of stagy, static movies like this one, no wonder the public at the time got sick of musicals. The genre had to be reconceived a couple years later, turned into a faster, fresher, more kinetic entertainment that was truly cinematic.
SPRING IS HERE is a typical plodding commercial product of its era. It's competent without being in any way outstanding. It will interest specialists as an example of writing and performing styles of the 1920s, but it won't win any new converts to early sound-era musicals. It's pretty bad ...
Fazenda and her co-stars sing well in the operetta style that was still popular at this time, but their acting tends to be as stiff, stagy and clichéd as the story, dialog, and camera-work.
It's interesting to see the kind of brainless and virtually heartless musical comedy that was current when SHOW BOAT debuted on Broadway and then on film, pointing the way toward more heartfelt, substantial musicals in the future. Tastes in comedy change, but I doubt anyone found this one very funny even when it first appeared. The humor is really forced and lame.
The story is an ancestor of the teen comedies that would be popular decades later: a young jazz baby can't decide between two suitors, while her cranky, "old-fashioned" father and clueless mother provide comic relief.
Hit with a bunch of stagy, static movies like this one, no wonder the public at the time got sick of musicals. The genre had to be reconceived a couple years later, turned into a faster, fresher, more kinetic entertainment that was truly cinematic.
SPRING IS HERE is a typical plodding commercial product of its era. It's competent without being in any way outstanding. It will interest specialists as an example of writing and performing styles of the 1920s, but it won't win any new converts to early sound-era musicals. It's pretty bad ...