Janae Milner
Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.
Raymond Sierra
The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
Walter Sloane
Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.
DKosty123
When I saw that Vincente Minnelli was the director here, I thought, well Skelton at least got a little more support here with Eleanor Powell and a lot of staging. While there is a story, it not only was done before, but the film still does not make a comfortable fit for Red. Skelton would not hit his stride until television.This is a war time production, obvious from the themes. Amazing to me is the unlisted cameos. For example, Butterfly McQueen is in this one, along with a fairly large group of unaccredited folks. Butterfly walks a poodle near Skelton when he is sitting defeated in a park.The plot has Skelton chasing a show girl, as a pants presser chasing her by going to every one of her live shows. Meanwhile, a member of the cast of the show is planning to blow up the theater. The plot is not as important as the music and dancing it turns out with Red doing some comic relief.You gotta love Powell and Lena Horne who are great. This is Vincente Minnelli working with a mixed race cast before the war is over. This same year he is directing an all black cast in "Cabin In The Sky" and it appears he literally borrows some of the cast from that picture to make cameos lat in this picture.As a fan of Red, am glad I finally caught this one. So far, the scripts for Red in his films are lacking and this one is not an exception. At least here, he got an A-List Director and cast along with Jimmy Dorseys Orchestra.
heathentart
If you adore Red Skelton... If you adore Eleanor Powell... If you adore Swing music and ballads... If you enjoy just kicking back and letting the experience take hold...,This is a terrific movie to enjoy with a bowl of popcorn. It's especially good when it's on TCM because there are no nasty cuts or commercials.It's fluff, make no mistake. No Tarantino gore, no Stone conspiracies, no angst... just pure fun watching some of the best talent Hollywood ever had.Lena Horne, Hazel Scott, Jimmy Dorsey, Bob Eberly, Helen O'Connell for the music. Eleanor Powell's magnificent dancing, Red Skelton's brilliant slapstick and his heart-felt sweetness. Then there's the rest of the cast - Thurston Hall, Sam Levene, John Hodiak, and Richard Ainley as Larry West, for whom this would be his last picture.The plot has its nuttier moments, none of it meant to be taken seriously. It has plenty of eye-appeal in the costumes (magnificent gowns) created by Irene Sharaff, inarguably one of the greats in the history of design. There are jewels to glitter and shine and, if they were fakes, they were great fakes.The plot gives Red Skelton plenty of opportunity to do what he did best. Just check out the "beard" scene - you'll know what I mean.OK, so it ain't "Gone With The Wind," or "Of Human Bondage," but it's not supposed to be, even with the Civil War play going on.One of the funniest parts for me was the sound effects guy doing the "hoofbeats" with the coconut shells, even though YOU know that the sound was being made by a Foley guy in post production. But it's a sound made within a picture by someone outside a picture... ahhh, now I'm confusing myself, and probably you, poor reader.Leave your troubles behind. Tune out the kids, the phone, the interruptions, the beds can be made later. Have fun!
edwagreen
Only the musical number by the fabulous Dorsey band as well as the playing of Ms. Scott and wonderful singing by Lena Horne are about the only 2 saving graces of this rather silly film.The trouble here is the far too many sub-plots. We have Red Skelton pursuing entertainer Eleanor Powell. She marries him when she discovers infidelity on the part of her boyfriend. A dancer with a pants presser? Sounds silly enough but they don't take the plot far enough. Instead, we have John Hodiak as a player in a show who is really a Nazi saboteur ready to blow up the theater area which is next to some important valuables.Some of the Skelton-Powell skits are way overdone.While we may have needed films like this in war-time, some of this is just too silly to imagine.
jwtinsley
No one seems to point out that his film is a remake of an earlier film Buster Keaton made for MGM titled "Spite Marriage", with many of the visual gags pulled directly from that earlier film with almost no changes. So as well as Red Skelton did in this, an earlier genius had done it first. Many of the best sight gags were lifted note-for-note from Keaton. The two films differ greatly in their sub-plots, but the core premise is the same. If you liked this movie, you should seek out the earlier film; a lot of it is genuinely funny. Although not Keaton at his peak (he was hampered by the MGM-imposed studio system), any Keaton is worth seeing.
