Tyreece Hulme One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Leoni Haney Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Fulke Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

gkeith_1 Bw lose one point. Wish it were color. Berkeley gain one point. He always did an excellent job. Keeler was a good dancer here, being at the front of a dance group who did not have obviously her superlative talents. Kibbee always a sweetheart, and blindsided by Joan Blondell.Hugh Herbert was the flustered gazillionaire wealthy relative. He was thorough in always reminding everyone to remain their upright moral selves. Dick Powell was his wonderful singing self, as always. The Hays Code was soon to obliterate the short, flimsy costumes as shown here. The legion of decency was both inside and outside this film.

richard-1787 There's nothing wrong with the plot and dialogue of this movie, but they're fluff. Not worth your full attention, though there are fine comedians delivering them.Skip to the show that finally gets put on at the end, and watch what starts off as a very unassuming number, Powell singing to Keeler "I only have eyes for you." Then, as Powell falls asleep beside her on the subway, he begins to imagine/dream a remarkable production number with giant white cogwheels and beautiful women all turning inside each other. It just keeps getting more and more complex, in geometric patterns, as the song is repeated in different arrangements. It's a wonderful 10 minutes.Then go at get your popcorn.

utgard14 Millionaire Hugh Herbert leads a moral crusade against musical shows he deems objectionable. But his young relatives Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler are both actors and intend to put on a show of their own. They also date but, before you are grossed out, we're told they're 13th cousins. Anyway, the plot is incidental. What we really want to see are those wonderful Busby Berkeley musical numbers, which are all great fun.Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler are likable leads. Neither strains their acting muscles. Powell sings several pleasant tunes. Joan Blondell, not surprisingly, steals the show as the sexy wisecracking dame she always played so well. Hugh Herbert is an acquired taste. I have watched movies where I enjoyed him and watched movies where I couldn't wait for him to go away. His primary shtick was to fidget with his fingers and mumble a lot, frequently throwing in a 'woo hoo.' It could get old fast. Thankfully here he resists using many of his usual idiosyncrasies (whether that's his choice or the director, I don't know). Because of this, I thought Dames had one of Herbert's better roles. There's more fine comedic support from Guy Kibbee, Zasu Pitts, and Leila Bennett. It's a fun movie. Not the best of the Warner Bros musicals but a good one.

funkyfry This film defines "factory film-making" -- total paint by the numbers approach to musical film, with contempt for the intelligence of its audience. Let's wrack up the film's most obvious faults -- only one memorable song ("I Only Have Eyes for You") which unfortunately is played twice for a total of about 15 minutes so that you want to tear your hair out. Only one decent (I mean half-way decent) singer in Dick Powell. A poor script that doesn't allow the funny supporting players like Guy Kibbe to rise to the occasion.Everything about this movie was seemingly pulled together in great haste, so that various elements of the story that might have been fun just feel obligatory. Why does Ruby Keeler get angry at Dick Powell (I won't even bother to use the names of their characters.... Powell is "Jimmy", of course), and then decide to do the show anyway? Don't look to the film for any answers. It just seems to happen because that's what the audience expects to see in these films. I guess the formula was so set by this point that they felt they could use shorthand to express even what are supposedly the primary emotional moments in the story."Eyes for You" shows up so early, and so intimate, that it was easy for me to predict it would be used later for the extravaganza. In fact basically the structure of this movie is the first 2/3rds are a half-baked situational comedy about Guy Kibbe trying to inherit $10 million, and then the last 1/3rd is just a series of increasingly mind numbing musical sequences that have no relationship to the story or characters or to any idea. Geometrical shapes are used in stunning arrangements by Busby Berkeley -- my problem is that there is never any concept behind it. It's kind of neat to look at, but totally pointless. And the "Eyes" sequence with hundreds of images of Ruby Keeler is actually disturbing. I don't know how big of a fan you'd have to be of Ruby Keeler to watch that without feeling an urge to vomit or to run screaming out of the theater. Disembodied Ruby Keeler heads seem to lunge and lurch all about and then form their own geometric shapes, and at the end as it's supposed to be Powell's dream we should worry about his mental state. But of course, as usual there's also no attempt to show anything that could actually happen on a stage, despite the fact that the entire running length of the film prior to these sequences has been about Powell putting on a Broadway show everything we see is camera tricks that could never work on stage.In the film's most embarrassing skit, Powell's character plays some kind of showbiz bigwig who refuses to see George White and George Gershwin but readily allows a group of "dames" to enter his office and practically attack him. "Who knows the names of those composers?" he tells us, "Admit it, you pay to see the dames." This kind of cynical joke reveals everything about the mindset of the producers of this film, and explains why it's such a piece of garbage now compared to the better musicals of the 30s and 40s. First of all, the people behind this film would have been better off to hire somebody like Gershwin who could have provided some memorable music. Instead it's full of pointless sequences with hundreds of plump girls going through boring military routines in geometric shapes. Geez Mr. Powell, I sure do like that better than those lame musicals that actually have, you know, good music and decent stories.Lame, insulting to the intelligence, insulting to the taste, it's no wonder the steam ran out of these types of musical shows long before the big war broke up the party for good.