If you like the main players in this picture -- Gaynor, Farrell, Dunn, and Rogers -- then you will enjoy this modest picture. Otherwise it could be around 2-1/2 stars out of 4 stars. It looks economically made and, per IMDb's Release Dates, Fox released it only 3 weeks after Stand Up and Cheer! But could it have been filmed first? Shirley Temple is very recognizable in the film, for all of the 3/4 of a second that she is on camera, without even a chance to speak. If Stand Up and Cheer! gave to her her breakthrough role, then why was she all but cut from Change of Heart? Another missed opportunity was Mischa Auer's who has maybe 5 seconds and 1 line. Symptoms of what encouraged Fox to merge the next year with Twentieth Century Pictures?
As other reviewers have mentioned, this is still a heartwarming film. Besides the lovey-doveyness of Gaynor and Farrell, Rogers is also fun. She seemingly tries to vamp any guy who comes her way. Dunn's performance reminded me of Johnny Nolan 11 years later in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and here he is even more optimistic, even though they all start out in low rent accommodations.
One of my favorite scenes is the 2+ minutes with Gaynor and Farrell on the boat to Coney Island. Not so much for what they talk about as for the background music. The scene starts out showing couples dancing, and the music that the band plays for the 2+ minutes is "Broadway's Gone Hill-Billy" (AKA ...Hillbilly; 1934 recordings used both spellings). Yes, the same song featured in Stand Up and Cheer! Fox, like the other studios, evidently liked to promote its music library. Hillbillyness has nothing to do with either Gaynor or Farrell (neither one particularly sprightly in this scene), and the dancers also appear oblivious to the unsung lyrics, but the tune is still guaranteed to get you out onto the dance floor. Yet another of the enjoyable scenes in Change of Heart.
As other reviewers have mentioned, this is still a heartwarming film. Besides the lovey-doveyness of Gaynor and Farrell, Rogers is also fun. She seemingly tries to vamp any guy who comes her way. Dunn's performance reminded me of Johnny Nolan 11 years later in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and here he is even more optimistic, even though they all start out in low rent accommodations.
One of my favorite scenes is the 2+ minutes with Gaynor and Farrell on the boat to Coney Island. Not so much for what they talk about as for the background music. The scene starts out showing couples dancing, and the music that the band plays for the 2+ minutes is "Broadway's Gone Hill-Billy" (AKA ...Hillbilly; 1934 recordings used both spellings). Yes, the same song featured in Stand Up and Cheer! Fox, like the other studios, evidently liked to promote its music library. Hillbillyness has nothing to do with either Gaynor or Farrell (neither one particularly sprightly in this scene), and the dancers also appear oblivious to the unsung lyrics, but the tune is still guaranteed to get you out onto the dance floor. Yet another of the enjoyable scenes in Change of Heart.