Good show to go (ya)

Lejink

A film I've hunted down from my youth, this is Stanley Donen's loving tribute to the early Hollywood Golden age, personified in two (and a bit, counting the trailer for the "Hell's Angels" spoof aviation film in the intermission) spliced novellas rolled into one. Directed with finesse, played with brio by all the cast doubling up roles in both features, it's a fine entertainment all round.

I'm a sucker for boxing movies of the era and if anything slightly favour the B & W first feature "Dynamite Hands" over the "Baxter's Beauties" main attraction. The former benefits too from more gags, although the latter holds its end up with some typically stylish musical numbers at the finale. Both stories pay due homage to all the acknowledged clichés in both genres, and benefit from Donen's use of period devices like the old fashioned "curtains up" dissolves between scenes.

The cast all look like they're enjoying themselves which certainly helps matters. Biggest star present, George C Scott, somehow seems a little miscast in each of his roles, but gets by on style and enthusiasm, while Red Buttons and Art Carney are able in support. Harry Hamlin is effective as the boxer with a jaw of gold, (about the only mixed metaphor not employed in the feature!) forsaking the ring for the legal profession in "Dynamite Hands" and it was nice to see Barry Bostwick, whom I recently watched play another nerdy character in "Rocky Horror Picture Show", get a prominent run out as a Dick Powell type in "Baxter's Beauties". Meanwhile Trish Van Devere is suitably peppy as the understudy-makes-good starlet in the Zeigfeld spoof.

The set dressings for both films are first rate as you'd expect, the dialogue snappy if not quite laugh-a-minute, while the songs from the musical in "Baxter's Beauties", while well short of Porter or Gershwin standards, are pleasant and humorous enough.

I really enjoyed this double tonic and wish the same team could have contrived a double feature follow up perhaps incorporating spoofs of say, a southern melodrama and a hard-boiled private eye thriller...

score 7/10

Lejink 20 August 2010

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2298457/