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A decent Danny Kaye vehicle. The humor is delicate and the music is memorable. Kaye isn't as funny as Gary Cooper was in the original -- "Ball of Fire", also directed by Howard Hawks. I know that's hard to believe but the character of Professor Hobart Frisbee is supposed to be pawky, professionally precise, and socially clumsy. Kaye is his usual stuttering self, whereas Cooper WAS the character. And Virginia Mayo, delicious as she is, doesn't have the sassy talent of Barbara Stanwyk, who could throw away laugh lines and still get smiles. Mayo seems earnest as all get out.
Still, nice technicolor photography, almost lurid. And the musicians do their thing, which is pretty good, in fact. How could they not? Tommy Dorsey, Satchmo, Lionel Hampton, Charlie Barnet, Mel Powell, and a supporting role for Benny Goodman. I don't know if you have to realize what a musical technician Goodman was to appreciate the scene in which, as a fuddy-duddy musicologist, he is invited to take a crack at playing swing music. I think there's a recording of his playing Mozart's clarinet quintet too. Many of those once-household names, I imagine, have already disappeared from popular consciousness. A good thing they didn't hire Charlie Parker or somebody. It wouldn't have a prayer of striking a resonant chord.
score 6/10
rmax304823 21 January 2013
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2740483/ |
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31-3-2021 04:36:17