Just perfect...

It is a performances centric movie

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

With the considerable budget of $1.1 million, a futuristic world of social and technological advances is enveloped in contemporary song- and-dance numbers. The story is simple and follows the familiar "boy meets girl, boy can't have girl, boy gets girl in the end" formula. Silly side-plot involves 1930 accident victim brought back to life in 1980 by pioneering scientists. Almost a century later, and decades after the "future" envisioned here, the entire production could be viewed as "camp" like the 1936 "Refer Madness" or similar completely discredited "careful-what-you- wish- for" public service documentaries. Seeing a love-struck young man sing about "a good old-fashioned girl" (just like Grandma) may have been the ideal back in 1930 (or 50 years before that), but in 2017 such musings are more likely to cause laugh riots.The efforts made with visual effect are impressive, as there has been little precedent. We may snicker to see that airplanes haven't changed much from 1930 to 1980, still operating with single propellers, yet be impressed by air dryers replacing hand-towels and bathroom sinks conveniently and automatically disappearing into the wall after use. The ideas were advanced beyond 1980, even if the designs were stuck in 1930.I enjoyed this film for it's novelty. True fans of the Science Fiction genre may want to skip this one, it's a curiosity, not much more. The acting is B-movie caliber, but the elaborate musical numbers are worthwhile. It's a mixed bag of jumbled goodies, probably something for most film buffs.

Hard to imagine a worse movie in any one of the three genres in which it's classified. It fails on all three levels, as a comedy, a fantasy, and as a musical. As a fantasy it is a juvenile attempt to depict martians as primitive jungle types and with no atmospheric difference from earth. The worst musical number in the picture takes place in this setting. As a musical, the first two songs were not too bad but needed better arrangements as they fall somewhat flat. But "The Drinking Song" was god-awful. As a comedian, El Brendel wins the Hand-Painted Mustache Cup as the worst movie comedian ... ever. And "Just Imagine" is not his first offense.A truly terrible movie, and the only valid reason to see it is to prove to yourself that even great Hollywood minds can come up with a lemon. But we already knew that. (Capitolfest, Rome, N.Y., 8/16)

Set in New York City in the far future year of 1980, this was the first science fiction film made as either a talkie or a musical. It stars the little remembered vaudeville comedian El Brendel as a man who is struck by lightning in 1930 and revived 50 years later. I can't say that I found either him or the film particularly funny. The biggest chuckles were provided by Frank Albertson and Marjorie White, who was sadly killed in a car crash in 1935. The songs are pretty forgettable or just...odd. They're not exactly Cole Porter or Irving Berlin. However, I did like the one about drinking which is one of several digs at Prohibition in the film. Of the 386 films that I watched since January 2014, this is the oldest as well as being the oldest talkie that I have ever seen, though I have seen several older silent films.Only 19 years old at the time, Maureen O'Sullivan, one of Ireland's first film stars, is the female lead and the best actor in the film. She and Albertson were really the only ones in the film to have careers worth mentioning afterwards. The acting is generally pretty bad. That may have something to do with the fact that sound films were still very new in 1930 and actors were learning the new craft of acting in such films but I've seen several others from 1931 to 1934 where the acting was considerably better so that excuse only goes so far. Maureen O'Sullivan and Joyzelle Joyner were the only actors in the film who were still alive in the real 1980, which was the year that the latter died. The director David Butler - who later directed several Shirley Temple films and "Calamity Jane" - died in June 1979 so he just missed out on seeing whether the film's vision of the future would come true or not. However, by that stage, it was a pretty safe bet that it wouldn't! I loved the design of the New York of 1980, which was presumably inspired by "Metropolis". The footage was later reused in the "Flash Gordon" and "Buck Rogers" serials while the very impressive looking "rocket plane" used to travel to Mars was later seen as Dr. Zarkov's rocket ship in the "Flash Gordon" ones, as were some of the props and costumes. Speaking of Mars, I loved the design of the planet too. I think that this could very well have been the first on screen depiction of a manned mission to Mars. The scenes on Mars are pretty bizarre, it has to be said, but they're good fun and probably the best part of the film.Incidentally, Maureen O'Sullivan's family and mine go way back! Well, sort of. I'm not lifelong best friends with her grandson Ronan Farrow or anything. My great-grandfather was a private in the Connaught Rangers before, during and after World War I and his commanding officer was her father Captain Charles O'Sullivan. They served together in India and the Western Front. When in Ireland, they were stationed in Boyle, County Roscommon, her hometown, and my great-grandfather remembered her playing around the barracks as a little girl. That means that I am only three degrees of separation from a 1930s Hollywood star.Overall, this is not a great film by any means but it's fun, even it isn't particularly funny, and has an important place in sci-fi history as the genre's first sound film. However, it did little for it on the big screen as, outside of some of the Universal Monsters films which were more horror orientated in any event, there were hardly any sci- fi feature films (as opposed to serials) made in the 1930s or 1940s. It was not until the 1950s that the genre began to have an impact in Hollywood.

"Just Imagine," which I didn't know existed until I caught it this morning, is a strange bird: it anticipates hand driers and "incubator babies," but not zip codes or computer navigation. There don't seem to be any minorities in 1980, either. Oddly enough, it correctly predicts people will still be using pens and fly swatters!It not only takes jabs at anti-Semitism, but at Margaret Sanger's Eugenics movement, which probably inspired the Nazis' Final Solution. For reasons not explained, the government decides who marries whom based on "distinction." LN-18 has been "betrothed" to MT-3, a jerk whose only "distinction" is he runs the paper his father left him. LN-18 loves J-21, who has nothing going for him other than he's a nice guy. His roomie RT-42 loves LN-18's best friend, D-6 (Marjorie White, who nearly steals the show). RT-42 advises J-21 to forget about LN-18, but he is determined to do something to prove he is "distinguished" enough to marry her. A flunky for inventor Z-4 seeks J-21 out for a project guaranteed to blow Paper Boy out of the water: the first trip to Mars! Meanwhile, for reasons also unexplained, scientists have revived a man who died 50 years earlier. In a great jab at how scientific endeavors are often nothing more than exercises in megalomaniacal callousness, once brought back, he is promptly tossed aside like a piece of garbage. J-21 and RT-42 befriend Single O, and he gets blasted on the booze pills they give him!If Roberto Benigni and Fanny Brice mated, they would've had El Brendel. He has Brice's sweetness and Benigni's charm without the self-serving phoniness. You should be offended by a gay joke he cracks at Loko's expense, but he diffuses it with a goofy sincerity. He also had great physicality. Watching him get manhandled by Boko (who can't stop conking him over the head), then dispatching with a Vulcan Grip was a riot!If Ed Wood had a budget, he would have made "Just Imagine." The Mars sequence is a hoot! The natives dress in Caveman-Buck Rogers, worship a bugged-out idol, and dance like Martha Graham on crack! Who knew it took only 2 hours to fly from Earth to the Red Planet? Must be seen to be believed!