CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

wes-connors Most old films noted as "of historical interest only" are actually very entertaining. "Rio Rita" is not. It is one of the better examples of the "historically interesting" film. It's also helpful if you view it as a extravagantly filmed stage production. The 1927-28 stage musical, produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, was a colossal success. And, the too long film version was voted 1927's fourth "Best Picture", in the annual poll conducted by "Film Daily". The opportunity to see "Rio Rita" on screen, in partial color, with popular Bebe Daniels (as Rita Ferguson) in her first speaking (and singing) role, proved irresistible at the box office. Ms. Daniels did not equal her 1920s silent successes, but extended her popularity into the early "talkie" era. Check out the debuting comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey (with Dorothy Lee) in "Hips, Hips, Hooray!" for a better representation of their work.***** Rio Rita (1929) Luther Reed ~ Bebe Daniels, Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey

preppy-3 Early talkie with musical interludes. In Mexico people are looking for the bandit Kinkajou. Many people believe it is the brother of the lovely and popular Rio Rita (Bebe Daniels). Looking for him is dashing Captain Stewart (John Boles) and evil General Ravanoff (Georges Renavent). The "comedy" team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey provide some astonishingly unfunny routines.Historically this is important. It was one of the first talkies and the last half hour is in color. But it's really pretty bad. The plot itself is creaky and the sound recording is terrible (but that can be excused). The songs and dancing themselves aren't bad (for 1929) but the movie is slow-moving and pretty boring. I find it hard to believe this movie was actually 30 minutes longer! Good acting doesn't help much. Also the comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey pop up. They were pretty big in the 1920s and 30s but they're virtually unknown today. Considering their material in this I can see why! Their comedy is downright painful--I groaned aloud at some of the lines. It reached the point that I was fast forwarding through their "comedy" bits. To make things worse the final half hour is in very washed out color. So, film buffs might want to watch for historical purposes but it's a real long haul. I give it a 4.

bkoganbing When movies began to talk a whole new vista of motion pictures opened up with the musical. Not that musical properties hadn't been done before, most famously Rudolf Friml's Rose Marie was done as a silent film with Joan Crawford in the lead. The Student Prince was also done with Norma Shearer. But singing and dancing was something new and it's no accident that the first talking film, The Jazz Singer was a musical.The guy who made the best musicals back in those days was Florenz Ziegfeld. One of his best was the operetta Rio Rita which ran for 494 performances in 1927-1928. Since the setting was the west, to be exact the Texas-Mexican border, we essentially get the screen's first musical western.Rio Rita was the newly formed RKO Studios big budget film for 1929 and it starred John Boles and Bebe Daniels and Rio Rita was her talking picture debut. She surprised the world with a really nice soprano voice doing those Harry Tierney-Joseph McCarthy songs. Boles was one film's earliest singers and he does the famous Ranger song with gusto in the best Nelson Eddy manner. The other big song from the score was the title song that is sung as a duet with Boles and Daniels. Bebe's best solo number is an item that Tierney and McCarthy wrote specifically for the screen, You're Always In My Arms.Repeating their roles from the stage show are the comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey who also make their screen debut as well. The team itself was a creation of Florenz Ziegfeld and he used them in one of his Ziegfeld Follies editions. They're involved in a subplot about playboy Wheeler getting a Mexican divorce and getting into the clutches of a shyster attorney in Woolsey. I could see that both of them were individual performers because Bert Wheeler gets himself a fine song and dance number in Out On The Loose. He was quite the dancer, something we rarely saw in his comedy films with Robert Woolsey. Still it was as a team that they have come down to us.The main plot involved Texas Ranger captain John Boles going across the border to ferret out and apprehend a bandit called El Kinkajou and finding romance with Bebe Daniels. Like the first version of Rose Marie though his main suspect is her brother and Texas Rangers like Canadian Mounties put duty first.The film is a photographed stage musical essentially, just like the first two Marx Brothers films, The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers. But the opulence of a Ziegfeld Show is preserved and that is the main reason to see Rio Rita. The last half hour is in color and we can thank the Deity that was preserved. So for film historians and those who want a glimpse at the showmanship of Florenz Ziegfeld, don't miss Rio Rita when broadcast.

didi-5 Bebe Daniels, with a ridiculous accent and a trilling voice to rival Jeanette MacDonald, is Rita, being romanced by mysterious gringo John Boles. Their operetta duets are fairly pretty and Bebe gets to wear some good costumes.In another storyline interwoved with that of Rita are Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey (with little Dorothy Lee) in a comic divorce-based plot. Woolsey is the wise-cracking cigar-chomper with the glasses, Wheeler the little guy with the high voice and a nice line in song 'n dance.Rio Rita is a fun early musical with primitive Technicolor bits and one Berkeley-esque overhead shot with the frilly girlies doing their thing round Wheeler. Dorothy Lee's voice reminded me of Helen Kane (the lady who introduced I Wanna Be Loved By You before Marilyn got her hands on it).My favourite bit music-wise is the catchy 'Sweetheart, We Need Each Other'; otherwise the invisible girl only seen by the boys after quaffing some seriously strong plonk is a really funny bit.And I did like the fact that for 1929 this wasn't as primitive as other early talkies I've seen. Good stuff (and an invaluable record of a Ziegfeld show of course).