This movie isn't really that good a version of the 1930 Broadway Gershwin musical, as it leaves the songs aside and is reworked as more of a comedy vehicle for Wheeler and Woolsey. Eddie Quillan and Arline Judge are the flotsam hero and heroine not really needed, except to murder But Not For Me'. Dorothy Lee is pretty much wasted with little to do (just a couple of scenes and one song with Bert Wheeler the classic Ella Fitzgerald later made famous, You've Got What Gets Me').
The best bits really are the ones that are purely silly: the hypnotism scenes between the boys and the bad guy; the cacti dancing to I Got Rhythm' (oddly sung here as I've Got Rhythm' by sparky Kitty Kelly); Mitzi Green and her imitations (particularly of George Arliss!); little Wheeler elected as sheriff and then chased by the village heavy; and the long-distance taxi ride early in the film with the cardboard cop.
So the good news is it is a funny film with lots to enjoy on that front; however this movie doesn't do justice to the stage show; and the photography does most of the cast no favours.
Almost everyone involved hated this film Quillan and Lee didn't see the finished article until several decades later and the songs are dealt with inappropriately. What a pity that the best movie versions of the Gershwin shows (Porgy and Bess; An American in Paris; and of course the remake of Girl Crazy, in 1943) came after George Gershwin died.
The best bits really are the ones that are purely silly: the hypnotism scenes between the boys and the bad guy; the cacti dancing to I Got Rhythm' (oddly sung here as I've Got Rhythm' by sparky Kitty Kelly); Mitzi Green and her imitations (particularly of George Arliss!); little Wheeler elected as sheriff and then chased by the village heavy; and the long-distance taxi ride early in the film with the cardboard cop.
So the good news is it is a funny film with lots to enjoy on that front; however this movie doesn't do justice to the stage show; and the photography does most of the cast no favours.
Almost everyone involved hated this film Quillan and Lee didn't see the finished article until several decades later and the songs are dealt with inappropriately. What a pity that the best movie versions of the Gershwin shows (Porgy and Bess; An American in Paris; and of course the remake of Girl Crazy, in 1943) came after George Gershwin died.