Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Freaktana A Major Disappointment

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

MartinHafer THE WET PARADE is the sort of old fashioned film that looked old and out of date even when it came out in 1932. In so many ways, this film is a carryover from the early silent anti-drinking melodramas of the first decade of the twentieth century--complete with ridiculously one-dimensional characters and a very heavy-handed message. In fact, the message is so heavy-handed that I seriously doubt if the anti-alcohol message had much effect on audiences--other than to elicit laughter! This is all very sad because very few films have ever addressed the impact of alcohol on its many victims (most of which aren't even the drinkers themselves)--too bad this was handled so poorly.Why do I say it was handled poorly? Well, many of the drunks portrayed in the film are totally one-dimensional and the actors overact so much as they portray them. This was pretty apparent with Lewis Stone's character, but compared to the ridiculous guy played by Walter Huston, he was downright subtle. As for Huston, he seemed more like a Tourette's sufferer than anything else, as he REPEATEDLY twirled his handlebar mustache and grunted (some actual symptoms of the disorder--seriously). However, most in the audience today may not recognize him, but this character acts almost exactly like those from melodramas of 30 years earlier--widely exaggerating EVERYTHING and chewing the scenery! In many ways, he seemed like a drunk version of Snidely Whiplash! Now when it comes to the impact on those around these ridiculous drunks, the film did a much better job. The co-dependent family members and enabling friends were excellent touches--but still weren't enough to make up for the awful characters played by Stone and Huston.Other than these silly drunks, the film also chronicled the history of the prohibition movement--and this was mildly interesting from a historical point of view. What I learned from the movie is that what really helped this anti-liquor crusade was WWI and moves to stop the production of intoxicants in order to feed our troops and starving Europeans. An interesting tidbit amongst the "sledgehammer symbolism" throughout this entire film.If anyone knows of a movie to SERIOUSLY address alcoholism from this era, let me know--as for THE WET PARADE, it's practically cartoon-like in its generalizations and bad characterizations. It's good for a laugh and maybe a brief history lesson buried within, but that's about all.FYI--The director of this film, Victor Fleming, was himself an extremely heavy drinker according to several biographies I've read (including CLARA BOW: RUNNING WILD). And, ironically, if you read the biography for Huston on IMDb, he apparently was the master of ceremonies at a brewery party the night Prohibition expired!!

sryder@judson-il.edu As Maltin notes in his yearbook: this film manages to be both anti-liquor and anti-prohibition. Presumably the viewer is supposed to conclude that moderate drinking is OK. There are some really good performances: both Lewis Stone and Walter Huston are superb in their respective halves of the film: Stone as a too-convivial Southern gentlemen, and Huston as the proprietor of a run-down hotel who cadges drinks or even steals to support his habit. We see both die as a result of their consumption. Then, having persuaded us of the evils of alcohol and shown us the arguments for government control, we see how prohibition, with its bootleggers,speakeasies and phony liquor made America's drinking habit worse; which is probably true. All the performances are good, especially Neil Hamilton as the southern son following in his father's footsteps. The one curiosity is Jimmy Durante, under contract with MGM at the time, which wasn't doing many musicals or comedies (his teaming with Buster Keaton achieving only modest success)as a federal agent, and to see him struggling to keep down his Ha-Cha-Cha routine. He even got to do a deathbed scene; and not too shabbily. It is a two hour movie that tries to do too much, and could easily have been cut down to one and a half hours. But Stone and Huston, with good supportm make this an eight for me.

dbdumonteil There are movies which were made a long time ago and which seemed today as relevant as they were then;"the wet parade" is not one of them: it oddly blends melodrama with social comment and a touch of film noir thrown in.The first part is a muddled one,very confuse ,and the characters are not really interesting.Its purpose is to make us understand the heroine's daddy died because of the booze :she becomes hysterical as she screams -when his friends are drinking to her late father's memory- that whiskey and other liquors should be thrown in a cesspool ,no less.Second part involves a love affair between her and Robert Young,who also lost his father because... (well you get the picture)and a second one between her brother and Myrna loy who keeps a speakeasy during the prohibition.In parallel,Young and his pal Durante - who provides the film with the comic relief it did need - become some kind of Eliott Nesses.Durante is the stand-out of the movie.The movie ends with a long moral speech about the generation to come:God help 'em and preserve 'em from the devil's liquor.

Arthur Hausner One of my favorite movies mostly because I'm a Jimmy Durante fan and he plays, of all things, a treasury agent during prohibition! True, that doesn't stop him from being somewhat funny, cracking jokes and displaying his comedic talents, so anyone who likes Durante will enjoy his participation in this movie. There is also some fine ensemble acting from the large cast as we see some of the evils of liquor both before and during prohibition. And there's a great scene showing bootleggers making phony whiskey using wood alcohol and printing labels saying it was pre-prohibition liquor or from Canada.I noticed two onscreen credit errors: Frederick Burton is listed as playing Major Randolph, and Reginald Barlow is listed as playing Judge Brandon. The character names were erroneously interchanged.