AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

kidboots Clara was sure critics would dislike "Hoopla" as much as she did but she was wrong. By the time Paramount found a follow up vehicle to "Call Her Savage" twelve months had passed and Clara had lost the desire to work again but contractual obligations forced her to make one last film. An odd choice, Paramount went with "The Barker", a Broadway play starring Claudette Colbert that had already been made into a film with Betty Compson and Dorothy Mackaill. Clara didn't like her part as the tarty carnival dancer but if she rejected it she may have to wait another year for the studio to find something else. Critics loved it and found she had definitely matured as an actress. They also felt she photographed beautifully. Most actresses career's would be dead with a year between films but Clara, it was thought, was at the height of her power. But for Clara it was over and she was about to face her biggest challenge - motherhood and domesticity.Nifty Miller (Preston Foster) is in for a shock - his long, unseen son Chris (Richard Cromwell) has ridden the rails especially to catch up with his dad before the carnival opens in another town. Not everyone is happy to see him, his father wishes he had stayed on the farm and Nifty's mistress Carrie (Minna Gombell in another incisive portrayal) sees marriage to Nifty evaporate because of Chris's arrival."You mind your own business"!!! - "I ain't got the energy"!! Beautiful Lou (Bow) is the carnival vamp who leaves a trail of broken hearts in every town they play. Carrie is beside herself with jealousy and after a confrontation in a train (involving a gun!!) she convinces Lou (with the aid of $100) to trap Chris into a romance. Poor Clara, no wonder she felt jaded with the way the studios used her - her last film (although no one knew it at the time) and Fox still trotted out the obligatory "nude" bathing scene. The scene where Lou realises her feelings for Chris are genuine, her whole face has a transformation - Clara showed that she was still a forced to be reckoned with, within the acting world (even though no one, least of all Clara believed it)!!!The last scene bought tears to my eyes - Lou and Chris eventually marry, she forces him to return to his studies while she supports him doing an Egyptian dance at the Chicago World's Fair which proves sensational. Nifty reappears - his estrangement from Chris has hit him hard and he is down and out but Lou (unbeknownst to him) has arranged for him to be her "spieler" and the last shot is of the luminous Lou, Nifty realising everything she has done for Chris and finally able to give her all the accolades she deserves.Preston Foster was a superb, under-rated character actor who first came to attention when he recreated his Broadway role of Bud Clarke in the film version of "Two Seconds". Although only in his early thirties, with a bit of gray hair dye, he looked completely at home as Chris's father. Richard Cromwell was originally an artist whose series of masks bought him commissions from Joan Crawford, Bea Lillie and Greta Garbo. He was still only 20 and from there drifted into movies, usually playing fresh faced eager college kids ie "The Age of Consent" (1932) and "This Day and Age" (1933).

max von meyerling HOOPLA is a remake of a part-talkie film THE BARKER (1928) which in turn was based on a play. It was also the basis for two films by Ozu, the silent STORY OF FLOATING WEEDS (1934), and the Cinemascope and color FLOATING WEEDS (1959).In this permutation, Preston Foster is the father of Richard Cromwell who shows up one day at the traveling carnival he runs. While Foster tries to discourage his son's interest in show business Foster's neglected mistress Minna Gombel pays the carnival's resident femme fatale, Clara Bow, to distract the son, Richard Cromwell to allow her access to Foster.When first seen Foster has his hair grayed so patiently artificial I almost expected the film to be a flashback (music from Showboat can be heard disguised as circus music). The gray had obviously been added because in real life Foster was a mere ten years older than Cromwell.The main distinction of HOOPLA was that it was Clara Bow's last film. Its not difficult to see why her career ended. Though she got an especially up-beat review in Variety, she was at the beginning of an irreversible slide from Kupie cute to dumpy. Her stock in trade was 'perky' and it was looking out of place. Not only was her type going out of fashion and the arrival of the code was merely the coup de grace, she really didn't seem to want to continue. Both Harlow and Monroe, her successors as sex goddesses, projected other qualities which were more long lived. Harlow was elegant and Monroe child-like. Yet both died very young and Bow was quite elderly when she went.It might have been fun when she was one of the biggest stars in the world, but she didn't have the will to become a mere player. She was adequate or even fun playing herself, or at least a representation of the self manufactured myth, but she would never be able to do or enjoy merely continuing on as a working actress.Its an old story, one that is so common today that it barely attracts comment. Watch a decades worth of opening TV credits sometime. Bow does the things that wowed then a few years before. She is seen getting in and out of her clothes numerous times and takes a swim in the nude. You don't actually see anything but this was standard operating procedure for Bow. And now nobody cared.She does seduce the boy (she had been seen as something of a chicken queen earlier in the picture). It was sometime after her nude swim I think. They just barely get back to the train steaming out of a sidetrack (in order to let the Limited pass) and they stand in the vestibule and he says "Well we made it". Pretty unambiguous stuff.Bow regrets having taken on the trick but, well folks, she has fallen in love with the boy never-the-less. What a surprise. A woman manages, once again, to come between two men but it all ends happily in the end. The men are reunited.The print I saw had French titles at the beginning and the end (with no sound track) but an English language track with one reel having rather dodgy sound. Possibly this was found someplace as a dubbed print while a separate sound track was all that was left in the Fox vaults.Its a pleasant enough ride whose non-code details add immeasurably in unfolding the narrative in a straightforward fashion. But this is in a totally different universe from either of Ozu's masterpiece films, which, unlike HOOPLA, are highly recommended.

stwhite Very few performers can take an ordinary or above average script and make the movie stand out and make you want to see it again. I think Clara Bow was one of the few actresses that had that ability- not just with this film (and this story arguably centers around the father-son characters, not Clara's), but many of the others throughout her career. Without Clara in the part of Lou, this is just an average pre-Code film that would have been long forgotten (they certainly weren't trying to put anything by the censors in this one- a skinnydipping scene, Clara undressing, and Nifty's girlfriend upset because she can't spend the night with him because he doesn't want his son to know- by 1935 the Hays Office would would not permit any of this on screen). Watching her seduce the naive son of the carnival barker was fun to watch, as was the scene when she gets busted by a cop and a father for conning a ring from another young man. Hoopla does provide an interesting glimpse into carney life and rail travel in the early 1930s. The supporting cast is fine, particularly Richard Cromwell as Nifty, but I think with a little more effort on the writing and direction this could have even better. Although this may be one her better sound films, I wouldn't rate it at quite at the same level of Clara's best silent films, It and Mantrap, but it's still enjoyable. Clara clearly thrived in the silent environment and some have said that dialogue and the the constraints of the early sound stages restricted the uninhibited It girl. Maybe so, but I would argue that much of that can be attributed to the average material she was given to work with. This actress was capable of much more if she had been cast in better roles throughout her career. According to her biographer, Clara was not enthusiastic about making Hoopla, she just wanted to get it over with so she could fulfill her contract to Fox and retire. Regardless, if you are a Clara fan or just a fan of pre-Code films, odds are you will enjoy this one. I know I did and will watch Clara again and again!

melancholysugarcane This is one of my favorite movies from Clara. She shows her usual yet incredible range of emotions perfectly blended to her character, Lou. Although a beautiful performance by Clara, the movie seems somehow restrained, not being as heart-stirring as some of her silent performances. It is unique, though, in the fact that Clara seems to have shed much of her "IT" girl image that was so evident in her later silent films. All-in-all, a beautiful performance by Miss Bow and a deliciously intriguing story line.