Wordiezett So much average

VividSimon Simply Perfect

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

secondtake Search for Beauty (1934)You won't mistake this for a great movie, but it's fast and just perky enough to be fun. And it has Ida Lupino in an early American role.The premise is a diluted sex hook—dozens of great beauties, male and female, are gathered together for a contest and a weekend of health and exercise. So naturally there is, eventually, a lot of skin and buff bodies. Unlike most movies like this, however, it's pretty evenly split between men and women. There is even a massive dance number at the end rather like a Busby Berkeley number. (His first famous dance extravaganza was the previous year.)If the plot is a bit canned, it isn't quite obvious so will keep you guessing. The dialog is so fast it's frantic, and you'll never hear so much word play so relentlessly spoken. It's fun and funny—you can tell they had a blast writing the screenplay.The leading man opposite Lupino is Buster Crabbe, a hunk of a pretty man who just didn't have the acting ability to turn it into stardom. A former Olympic gold medal swimmer, he has a short swimming role here, which is fun. He stuck to athletic roles most of his life—like a serialized version of Tarzan—and is stretched a bit thin for this part.Not that this is a demanding movie. The two sidekick males are both character actors who you'll either enjoy or find irritating (because they push their schtick in well worn ways). Lupino is the highlight overall, still with some of her British accent. As the backstabbing and conniving builds, and the big last third of the movie takes off at a resort camp for fitness and beauty, the scenes get wilder and more chaotic.Love will have its final say, however, and its satisfying enough—more so than that silly last shot as "the end" appears, with a small amount of relief.

bkoganbing American swimming champion Buster Crabbe and British diving champion Ida Lupino co-star in Search For Beauty about two Olympic champions who get themselves involved with con artists Robert Armstrong and James Gleason who publish a salacious magazine with their girl Friday Gertrude Michael who gives both of them a reality check every so often.Crabbe comes off little better than Abner Yokum who's been weaned on that famous Yokumberry tonic since he was an infant. He's got the muscles, but little desire for female companionship. I mean this boy is simply interested in improving the human species of which he and his fellow athletes are the prize specimens. Lupino as his Daisy Mae comes off little better.I have to say though Armstrong and Gleason are quite a pair. Armstrong is poaching on Pat O'Brien territory and had Searching For Beauty been done at Warner Brothers, O'Brien would have done this without a doubt.Anticipating Hugh Hefner by a generation the guys always make sure that articles of interest accompany the photographic layouts of the scantily clad males and females. The scene in the editorial room was a highlight of the film for me. You won't have to look hard in Search For Beauty, it's all over the place to appreciate.

jjnxn-1 Not nearly as racy as many pre-codes this is an innocuous trifle starring a virtually unrecognizable Ida Lupino. New to Hollywood they were trying to make her over into an English Jean Harlow fortunately it didn't work and the ultra blonde thin eyebrowed look she is saddled with here disappeared within a short period. Still buried beneath all the gunk she gives a nicely flinty performance foreshadowing the tough broad persona to come. The same can not be said for Buster Crabbe, an extremely fit and handsome man but an actor of little ability. James Gleason is the only other actor to offer up any kind of distinctive work, he's not remarkable but does his standard hot tempered wiseguy part well. Ann Sheridan makes her screen debut here, unbilled and without lines, as the Texas winner of the Search for Beauty contest but unless you knew it was her the two tiny bits she is in sail right by. The story is paper thin and aside from a few references to drugs and a couple of bare male bottoms in a locker room scene nothing you wouldn't see after the code went into place. The big production number, to Sousa music yet, is a clunky mess designed solely to show off the fine physical attributes of the winners. As such it works but it is eye rollingly awful in every other way.

MartinHafer This film must rank among the most overrated films on IMDb with an amazingly inflated score of 7.6 as of this date. To top it off, I even noticed some reviews that gave this film a 10!! So, if these folks are to be trusted, it would seem to say that this film is on par with CASABLANCA, THE GODFATHER and GONE WITH THE WIND!!! It is not, I repeat, is NOT a good movie. No matter the hype, this is a very poor B-film. The only reason anyone might want to watch it is to marvel at the Pre-Code sensibilities--including a lot of sexual innuendo and a scene in the men's locker room where bare butts abound! Even for a Pre-Code film, SEARCH FOR BEAUTY is a shocker.As for the rest of the film, it's really quite terrible. Part of the problem is that young Buster Crabbe is fresh from the Olympics and really isn't much of an actor yet. The same can be said for a barely recognizable Ida Lupino. I say barely recognizable because she later had one of the biggest makeovers in Hollywood history--and if you didn't know better, you'd swear that it wasn't Ida! Unfortunately, she, too, can't act yet. Given more experience and time, she would become a heck of a talented lady, but here she is pretty flat.The rest of the problem with the film is that the plot, while appearing very sleazy and sexually charged, is amazingly dull and impossible to believe. Now following the naked butts which abounded at the beginning of the film, you'd think that the rest of the film would be that adult. However, the plot involving a con man (Robert Armstrong) who wants to publish a skin magazine SOUNDS pretty hot, but he photos and sin-sational articles are so tame by modern standards that you really can't get particularly excited or interested in the film. The most salacious thing about the last 3/4 of the film are that some of the costumes worn by the athletes late in the film are rather transparent--surprisingly so. So I guess pervs could watch just the beginning (at the Olypmics) and the end (when the health resort is opened) and skip the rest!!Overall, despite some cheap thrills in a film that, believe it or not, claims to be anti-pornography in its message, it is just not all that interesting or believable. In fact, after a while it's a real chore to keep watching it.