Tout l'or du ciel

Man, did I love the musical numbers in this film.....but hated the story. I wound up taping just the music segments out of this film and making myself a neat little half-hour video of fantastic song-and-dance numbers.

The dance numbers are 1920s-1930s material except you get 1980s color and special-effects (and loose sexual mores). Actually, these are more like put- ons of those routines, including Busby Berkeley extravaganzas. Added to the routines are humor. I just laughed out loud at the absurdity of them, which included having the actors lip-sync to the old-time singers.

The dance routines are all totally different and very entertaining, from the opening bank skit, to the kids in the classroom to Christopher Walken's striptease to Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters imitating Astaire & Rogers. The dancing is good and the songs are great: catchy and fun.

Story-wise, Martin ("Arthur Parker") plays a boorish, profane, lying and just plain unlikeable character. Are we supposed to root for him? Maybe we are to root for Peters, who plays "Lulu," the school teacher-turned- prostitute (sounds like real-life these days with all the female teacher sex scandals). Hey, I like Martin in a lot of films. He can be a very entertaining guy, but the character he plays in here.....well, you can have him and this very cynical and depressing story. No thanks.

It's no surprise to me it bombed at the box office. Too bad, because with a more appealing story a lot more people would have been treated to the great musical numbers in this movie.