Torero a la fuerza

Being made between the funny and entertaining 'Palmy Days' and the very funny and very entertaining 'Roman Scandals', you'd expect this to be something special but it's not. It's got the silliness, the songs, the Busby Berkeley routines, the Goldwyn girls and Eddie Cantor doing what he always does but it just doesn't gel together.

It's not a bad film but it's massively disappointing compared with his previous and subsequent films. What's different is the writing. Roman Scandals benefitted from being written by George Kaufman, one of the main writers for The Marx Brothers and Cantor himself co-wrote'Palmy Days'. W A McGuire (who also worked on the script for Roman Scandals) on his own doesn't quite cut the mustard with this. It comes across as extremely childish but of a quality that would be instantly rejected by any self-respecting children's tv station. If you've never seen an Eddie Cantor film, don't make this one your first or you will never watch another.

Like with the more edgy and cynical Marx Brothers movies, plots in Eddie Cantor films are meant to be completely stupid but this one is so ridiculous that it's just irritating. It also lacks any warmth or empathy with the characters primarily because the supporting actors are so utterly terrible - all of them - they're awful. I know Leo McCarey's directorial style was very relaxed but he seemed to have slept through this one.

On a positive note, it does have a lot of Toby Wing - she was the ridiculously pretty chorus girl who appeared uncredited in loads of early 30s musicals. One wonders why she never became a star. The other positive is that this isn't 'Whoopee', Cantor's first film - that is unwatchably awful.