Crappy film

Absolutely brilliant

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Seeing it for the first time on Youtube recently, 'Ali Baba Goes to Town' made for an hour and a half of good fun entertainment and an interesting curiosity. Not a great film, but a pretty good one.The story is a bit thin and silly, kept afloat by the dialogue, some efficient pacing and the songs but more an excuse to string along musical numbers and comedy. The cast are a mixed bag. Eddie Cantor enjoys himself thoroughly and is enormous fun, while Roland Young is a suitably urbane sultan. On the other hand, Louise Hovick (aka Gypsy Rose Lee) overdoes it and, despite singing gloriously, Tony Martin is very wooden.However, 'Ali Baba Goes to Town' looks good, with pleasing photography, costume and set design while the special effects still hold up as above decent. The script is funny and cleverly written, while the energy has much exuberance so the film never feels dull.A big standout here is the songs, which are marvellous. The standouts being "Swing is Here to Sway", "Twilight in Turkey" and "Vote for Honest Abe".Overall, a fun curiosity if not great. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Bright musical comedy with Eddie Cantor as a hobo who wanders onto a movie set and gets hired as an extra. He falls asleep and dreams he's back in ancient Bagdad.In ancient Bagdad he's taken as a relative of Ali Baba and gets involved in the palace intrigue where the Sultana (Gypsy Rose Lee as Louise Hovick) and her allies are plotting to overthrow the Sultan (Roland Young). Cantor cracks an endless stream of one-liners about Roosevelt's "New Deal," which of course no one understands. The plot then has Cantor running for president against the Sultan. But it's all a dream.The two show stoppers are the extended "Swing Is Here to Sway" with Cantor joined by dancer Jeni Le Gon and the fabulous Peters Sisters, and the "Twilight in Turkey" number by Raymond Scott and Quintet and danced by the Pearl Twins. Great stuff.Co-stars include Tony Martin, June Lang, John Carradine, Virginia Field, Alan Dinehart, Stanley Fields, Warren Hymer, and Lynn Bari as a harem girl. The Peters Sisters, Mattye, Anne, and Virginia, just about steal the show from Cantor, who discovered them at a local nightclub and put them right in his movie.One of Cantor's best.

ALI BABA GOES TO TOWN (1937) is an interesting historical curiosity for classic movie buffs. It stars famed entertainer Eddie Cantor in one of his rare movie roles. The cast includes such familiar faces as Roland Young, John Carradine, Douglass Dumbrille, and Charles Lane, but also features burlesque queen Gypsy Rose Lee (a.k.a. Louise Hovick) at the outset of her ill-fated film career. "Looney Tunes" fans and music enthusiasts are also in for a treat seeing Raymond Scott and His Quintet dressed as Arabs and "performing" their eccentric jazz ("Twilight in Turkey") on primitive instruments.Old movies from Hollywood's Golden Age often serve as time capsules for their era, and that is true with ALI BABA. Meant to be shown for a few weeks in theaters before stepping aside for new features from Hollywood's movie-churning machine, films set out to entertain the audience of their time, never dreaming of being resurrected in the age of home video and TCM. Jokes are often topical, reflecting the political climate or world news of the day. Dance sequences capture an era in music history and small cultural references may be lost on modern viewers.ALI BABA GOES TO TOWN borrows its premise from Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", inserting a modern man (through a dream) into an old and foreign setting. This time, star-struck autograph seeker Al Babson (Cantor) visits the set of a Hollywood "Arabian Nights" movie, dozes off, and imagines he is in ancient Bagdad, where Roland Young is the real sultan and Douglass Dumbrille is the scheming prince. Cantor reforms Bagdad, introducing American principles of democracy and economics. He shapes Arab society in the image of New Deal America, with amusing (if absurd) modern touches (camel filling stations?) and plenty of cracks at Franklin Roosevelt and 1930s politics.Eddie Cantor was an entertainer on stage, radio, and screen. He was famous in part, like Al Jolson, for his blackface routines, and there's one in ALI BABA. When the sultan is unable to grab the attention of his tribal African servants, Cantor speaks some Cab Calloway jive and gets them on their feet. Rubbing on his minstrel face paint, Cantor leads the Africans in an extended musical number ("Swing Is Here To Stay"), which earned an Oscar nod for dance direction. The scene was an innocuous inclusion in 1937, but can be a bit uncomfortable for modern viewers in this age of racial sensitivity.Another great time capsule scene is at the close of the film, where the movie-within-the-movie has its glitzy premiere. It's a look back at the red carpet Hollywood premieres of yesteryear, where stars would be announced as they arrived by an emcee at a microphone. Footage from an authentic movie premiere provides cameos from Hollywood icons like Douglas Fairbanks, Shirley Temple, Tyrone Power, Victor McLaglen, Sonja Henie, Cesar Romero, and Dolores del Rio, as well as other stars of the day whose names haven't stood the test of time.This Eddie Cantor vehicle is a dated comedy in many ways, but is valuable from a historical perspective. With its political satire and its glimpse of vintage Hollywood, the movie is intriguing. Some of the gags are fun, and it's a rare film that shows John Carradine (in an Arabian get-up, no less) doing a silly little dance. The flying carpet effects are relatively primitive, but fairly effective. I'd never seen Eddie Cantor on film before, and I must say I found his eye-rolling shtick tiresome. But that's probably his trademark and he did know his way around a witty line of dialogue.Check out ALI BABA GOES TO TOWN if you're a fan of old-time Hollywood. (It helps if you're familiar with the 1930s and recognize names like Eddie Cantor, Gypsy Rose Lee, Roland Young, John Carradine, and Raymond Scott.) It's mildly entertaining, but it's certainly a neat curiosity. Keep an eye out for it.

Ali Baba Goes To Town anticipates the war in Iraq by several decades. Just as we are at war to democratize Iraq and its capital Bagdad, so Eddie Cantor is in Iraq by himself to bring the New Deal to the old caliphate. The populace seems to take to it somewhat better.Cantor is young Al Babson hitchhiking on a freight car to Hollywood when while doing a little soft shoe to entertain fellow tramps Stanley Fields and Warren Hymer he falls out of the car and in the desert. Not to worry though, he lands in the middle of a sand and sandal Arabian picture that 20th Century Fox was shooting. The film has the look of the kind that Maria Montez would do at Universal in the next decade. He gets hired as an extra.However in a big scene where he's one of many to pop out of a giant jar, Eddie over medicates himself on his many pills and falls asleep and dreams himself back into old Bagdad. The people he meets there are suspiciously like the stars of the film he's on like June Lang, Tony Martin, and Roland Young. Young makes a rather urbane sultan who takes to Cantor, so much so he makes him his prime minister. Cantor proceeds to introduce the New Deal to Bagdad and gives the people some ideas of democracy.That does not sit well with a trio of villains, Douglass Dumbrille, John Carradine, and Louise Hovick. If you don't recognize the name Louise Hovick, she was a minor starlet at Fox who would leave their shortly for another career involving exposure under the better known name of Gypsy Rose Lee. Cantor did this whole thing before and much better in Roman Scandals. In real life Cantor was a number one booster of the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt and the satire is somewhat blunted. It's also somewhat dated and you'd really have to be familiar with both Cantor and the Thirties to get a lot of the jokes.Tony Martin is in the film as a young reformer type or what passed for one in old Bagdad. I got a feeling that a lot of his role was left on the cutting room floor. He makes no mention of Ali Baba Goes To Town in his joint memoir with Cyd Charisse.Ali Baba Goes To Town did not fare well at the box office even with the presence of a whole lot of guest stars in the film via newsreel clips from the premiere of Wee Willie Winkie. By mutual consent Darryl F. Zanuck and Eddie Cantor did not make any more films and Cantor was off the screen for three years.The film is really for Eddie Cantor fans and for those who'd like to familiarize themselves with one of the greatest entertainers of the last century. But there are far better filmed examples of his work.