My first Shirley Temple movie in years (and I’ve only seen a handful at most) and one of my first truly “old” movies in far too long. I was pretty apprehensive on both counts but I probably couldn’t have picked a better movie to re-introduce me to old Hollywood.

There’s little to speak of by way of story – it’s the Depression and the White House appoints a New York theatre man as Secretary of Amusement (great idea, right? I thought so too, lol). There’s a slight love story in the mix. It’s really more an excuse for 70 minutes of lavish song and dance numbers, a lively comedy duo called Mitchell & Durant pre-empting Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson by decades throwing each other around an office, lol; even a talking penguin at the end. What it comes down to is, it’s a lot more than just a Shirley Temple movie, and considering the runtime that’s pretty impressive. I enjoyed every second of it and would certainly watch it again.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 6:24 pm in 4 hearts, Movie Reviews and tagged as b/w, cuties, Depression, musical, political, Thirties. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.