Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

ShangLuda Admirable film.

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

TheLittleSongbird Gold Diggers of 1933 was a terrific film with some of Busby Berkeley's best material. Gold Diggers of 1935 was almost as good too, but this was a little disappointing. Apart from the cracking final number All's Fair in Love and War Berkeley's choreography lacks excitement and has a rather toned down feeling to it(censorship no doubt had something to do with it). While it still looks quite nice, it's nicely shot and the costumes are well-tailored, there is also a sense with the less-than-grand sets and how some scenes are staged that there was a lack of budget. Dick Powell sings beautifully and has a charming appearance but can have a tendency to be a little too sappy and wooden here. The songs are very nice and catchy still, Speaking of the Weather is charming and All's Fair in Love and War is catchy and in all respects the highlight of the film. There's plenty of snappy dialogue to savour also, and while with some silly moments the plot is actually pretty decent and paced well. The performances compliment the film nicely, Victor Moore is very funny and wonderfully cranky, Joan Blondell still charms even when in more subdued mode and Glenda Farrell is deliciously sassy, coming this close to stealing the film whenever she appears. All in all, disappointing but still enjoyable. 7/10 Bethany Cox

mukava991 The high point of Gold Diggers of 1937 is Busby Berkeley's staging of "All's Fair in Love and War," an all-American dose of surrealism, like a militarized, scrubbed and bleached opus by Bunuel or Dali. It hypnotizes and amuses, mixing silliness and wisdom, finesse with crudeness. And it never hurts to have at one's disposal such raw materials as a superior Harry Warren melody, and in this case, a better-than-average Al Dubin lyric.The other songs in this light-dark comedy fare less well. The two main entries by E.Y. Harburg and Harold Arlen ("Speaking of the Weather" and "Let's Put Our Heads Together") are routine and interchangeable; when they merge in a poolside extravaganza, it's hard to tell where one leaves off and the other comes in. Harburg and Arlen also contributed the cynical "Life Insurance Song," performed only fragmentarily by Dick Powell, but it's quite sharp ("You'll get pie in the sky when you die, die, die…."). Sadly, Warren and Dubin's splendid "With Plenty of Money and You" is deprived of a big splashy production number all its own.The plot is actually not bad for movies of this type. Various bad guys, in cahoots with gold digger Glenda Farrell, try to profit from sick old theatrical producer (Victor Moore) by taking out a million dollar life insurance policy on him (innocently sold to them by Dick Powell) and then putting him into unhealthful situations which will maximize the chances of his quick and convenient demise. The proceeds will finance their new musical, which will be a big money- making hit. It's a nasty scenario when you think about it, spun out with a pretty good share of racy double entendres.Powell, in his 4th year of warbling wholesomely for the brothers Warner and sporting an unflattering mustache, looks like he's just about to roll back his eyes and shout "Enough!" but he manages to deliver the twinkle, the vitality and the sonorous vocals that made up his screen persona. Joan Blondell as his love interest is also beginning to show signs of wear. Her voluptuous chorine days are drawing to a close, but she can still pull off the act; as usual, she doesn't even attempt to sing and merely speaks her lyric lines. Victor Moore, Broadway veteran and seasoned character comedian, brings great nuance and even pathos to a role that might have been played as sheer low-minded slapstick by a lesser actor. Lee Dixon as one of Powell's fellow insurance salesmen comes off as a rather eccentric supporting actor in search of a screen personality until it is revealed that his primary talent is tap dancing, which he displays with great energy in the poolside number. But when you see the truly amazing footwork of the dancers in the 1929 Gold Diggers of Broadway (fragments of which are included as an extra feature on the Busby Berkeley Collection Volume 2), you realize that Dixon by comparison was an eager but clumsy beginner.So this late entry in the gold diggers series isn't as bad as one might expect. It would have been better, perhaps, if some of the performers had been more youthful and less sick and tired of playing the same types year after year and if there had been more socko musical numbers.

bkoganbing The next to last of the Gold Digger films finds Dick Powell as a rather unenthusiastic insurance salesman who'd rather be in show business, roped into selling an insurance policy to hypochondriac Broadway producer Victor Moore. Moore's got bigger problems than imaginary illnesses. He's got a couple of crooked partners in Charles D. Brown and Osgood Perkins. They've taken money from Moore and put in some stock that went belly up. Now to get the money back they have a scheme to insure Moore and then maybe push him along into eternity. In fact they almost trip him into it during the film.Joan Blondell is a former chorus girl now turned stenographer at the insurance company office and she gets her friends together with Powell and Lee Dixon from the company and they help Moore out.Gold Diggers of 1937 doesn't have quite the madcap lunacy of the 1935 edition, but still there's a lot of entertainment there. Busby Berkeley gets only two numbers here to demonstrate is creativity, Let's Put Our Heads Together and the finale All's Fair in Love and War. Powell solos with With Plenty of Money and You and he duets with current wife Blondell in Speaking of the Weather.Lee Dixon was a very talented dancer who graced a few musical films and then went east to Broadway and made his biggest splash as Will Parker in the original production of Oklahoma. Dixon died tragically young in 1953. I think he should have gotten some recognition from the Academy for having the nerve to go into this film playing a character named Boop Oglethorpe. There was only one more round for the Gold Diggers as in their next film they went to Paris and it was ended after that. This version is entertaining enough, even if not up to 1933 or 1935.

marc-112 The snappy dialogue and pace of Berkeley's previous films are not to be found here--GD of '37 feels more like a Republic musical than a Warners one. The bankroll went to the one big Berkeley number at the end--"All Is Fair In Love and War." It's a simple piece, lines of chorus girls dressed in white against a shiny black floor, but it is simply astonishing (the song is pretty catchy too). There is also a nice little number with Powell and Blondell called "Speaking of The Weather"--an interesting attempt to seamlessly integrate a musical number into the plot. Among the mistakes (besides the script) is the short-shrift given to the best, most popular song in the film--"With Plenty of Money and You."