TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Cooktopi The acting in this movie is really good.

Verity Robins Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

bkoganbing Cary Grant got to extend his range in Once Upon A Time and at the same time make a family film that was guaranteed box office. Not a bad win-win situation for him.The extension was having Grant play a not very nice show business producer who is now on his uppers. The theater he built in flush times is now threatened with foreclosure. But the answer just might be in the form of a young kid played by Ted Donaldson with a caterpillar which he keeps in a shoebox who actually gets up dances to the tune of Yes Sir That's My Baby.This rhythmically endowed caterpillar is for real all right, if only Grant can get the marketing rights to him and make the public believe. After some tries that ended in flops he gets Art Baker who played real life radio news broadcaster Gabriel Heatter to see the caterpillar named Curly and give it the kind of radio plug the New York Sun gave to an editorial answer to Virginia's letter about Santa Claus.But an offer from Walt Disney to add Curly to his Magic Kingdom now in formation is too good to pass up. But that would involve breaking young Donaldson's heart and also Grant would be running afoul of the young lad's sister, Janet Blair. Can Cary Grant be that big a heel?Once Upon A Time is a charming fantasy that I'm surprised no one has thought of remaking except the Japanese who did a short subject animated version of this story in the Sixties. I can certainly Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes doing a version of this story, maybe having Justin Bieber play the kid. Instead of Walt Disney they could sell him to Steven Spielberg and a known internet blogger could break the story.I want some screen credit if someone reads this review and sells the idea to Tom Cruise. Until then this is still a fine family film that holds up well even if people today have no idea who Gabriel Heatter was.

moonspinner55 'Dancing Bug Cuts a Rug'...or rather, 'How Did Cary Grant Get Roped Into This?' Theatrical producer, a "part-time genius" with three flops behind him, needs $100,000 to save his theater; he befriends an orphaned tyke with a bottle-cap hat, the boy's stone-cold chorine sister (who is roughly two times older than the kid), and the boy's caterpillar...who "dances" to "Yes Sir, That's My Baby". Elongated Aesop, although even Aesop provided a thoughtful moral. This one is just piffle, with the contrivance that the whole world would be chatting about such a miraculous event as a bug with an ear for music. This is the movie that launched a thousand worm jokes, and it's meant to be ironic that Grant (as the showman-turned-huckster) is the biggest worm of all. A box-office disaster in 1944, the film has not improved with age. Ted Donaldson is cute as the youngster, and Ann Loos has a funny scene playing Grant's put-upon secretary, but the insipid rest can easily be forgotten. * from ****

loringm This was a wonderful radio play Norman Corwin wrote for CBS Radio in the 1940s. It starred Fred Allen, and because it was during the infamous Petrillo Musician's Union Strike, the background music was vocalized by a chorus. I was charmed by it then, but felt then (and now) that the imaginative quality of the radio play would be diminished in a film. I also felt Allen would be far better than Cary Grant in the lead role. But Allen would have sold far fewer tickets.

dexter-10 A truly happy film produced in the middle of World War Two. The fantasy of the caterpillar which turns into a butterfly is well-worn, yet always popular. To a large degree, the war is ignored, yet due to the pervasive nature of long-term world conflict, some allusions to the conflict are noted. Especially pointed is the crew of the B-17 bomber who name their plane "Curly" after the caterpillar. They highlight the event with: "I've been in London, Chun King, and Malta and saw kids dodge bombs to try to save some mangey dog." Why not save a dancing caterpillar? The remarkable thing about this film is how many times one sees the caterpillar. Curly the caterpillar is a welcomed respite from the drudgery of prolonged war. Even with one hundred and fifteen credited actors, in this movie fantasy is the real star.