one of my absolute favorites!

A Brilliant Conflict

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Movies don't get much sillier than this one. From the looks of it, the folks who made Let's Go Native wanted only to entertain undemanding viewers with a lightweight, zippy comedy, one that offers a few laughs and a handful of musical numbers tossed in at random moments. In this, they succeeded. Whether or not it might still entertain viewers today depends entirely on the individual's taste for buffoonery, disposable songs, and Jack Oakie. I happened to see this film last night at the Museum of Modern Art, where it was shown as part of a retrospective saluting director Leo McCarey. The recently restored print looked and sounded great. The crowd chuckled indulgently at some of the punchlines, and groaned at others. This is the kind of flick obviously aimed at what they used to call the "tired businessman." I'm not a businessman, but I was kind of sleepy and it worked for me.Oakie plays a cab driver named Voltaire—don't ask—whose cab gets wrecked, thanks to a silly Englishman named Pistol (William Austin), who is involved in some way I don't recall at the moment with a costume designer named Joan (Jeanette MacDonald), who is broke, because all her money is invested in a traveling revue. Joan, in turn, is involved with a young man named Wally (James Hall), who was disinherited because of his involvement with her. Wally, for his part, is reluctantly involved with an heiress named Constance (Kay Francis), to whom he was betrothed against his wishes. Of course, none of this matters at all, and never did. We're here for the gags, which are hit-or-miss, and the songs, which sound like they were written on the set just before the cameras rolled.Are there any valid reasons to seek out Let's Go Native? Well, if you enjoy silent era slapstick you'll surely get a kick out of the opening sequence, when Joan's furniture is repossessed by a team of the most inept, accident prone moving men who are not named Laurel or Hardy. And indeed, for this sequence director McCarey employed a number of veteran comics he'd known at the Hal Roach Studio, including Charlie Hall and Harry Bernard. The crew foreman is played by gravel voiced Eugene Palette, also a Roach Studio graduate, who would seldom take on such strenuous roles in his prolific talkie career. If you ever wanted to see him take acrobatic falls and break large objects, here's your chance. Soon afterwards, Oakie's cab gets into a wild chase while Austin hangs from an open car door, and from the looks of it, he did some of his own stunt work. The punchline, when the cab crashes directly into a police station, is right out of the Keystone textbook.You'd think Miss MacDonald would be profoundly out of place in a movie like this one, but she's just as spirited and lively in Let's Go Native as she is in her Lubitsch vehicles, where her material was considerably more polished. Kay Francis, another good sport, appears abruptly mid-way. She's elegantly attired, plays well with others, and even sings a song without embarrassing herself. But for me, the biggest surprise is Jack Oakie. I've seen him in a number of movies without ever becoming a particular fan, and sometimes he's downright annoying, but I have to say he acquits himself well here. He looks remarkably trim, sings three songs, and even dances passably well. As ever, his comic shtick is a matter of taste, but you have to give the guy credit, he carries this picture, and provides much of its entertainment value.The director's guidance can be discerned not only in the slapstick gags with the moving men, but also in a shipboard routine, when a minor conflict between passengers and crew members gradually escalates into a melee, as people grab each other's hats and fling them overboard. (Personally I found this business a little forced, but the audience at MoMA seemed to enjoy it.) But then, when the liner collides with a smaller ship, we're suddenly in a serious situation. The panic feels genuine, and frantic cross-cutting only emphasizes the sharp change in tone. Not to worry, however. No one is hurt, and our principle players wind up on a desert island, where the silliness resumes. There are native girls with Brooklyn accents, and a self-proclaimed King (Skeets Gallagher). Increasingly, the picture feels like a live action Fleischer cartoon. Just as the whole enterprise threatens to run out of gas, a volcano erupts. The island breaks apart. A rescue ship beckons. Plot strands are hastily tied up, and before you know it we're looking at that familiar Paramount mountain logo, only without any lava.Needless to say, director McCarey went on to make far better movies than Let's Go Native. If they'd bothered to hire some decent gag writers to punch up the script, it could have been on par with such classics of wackiness as Million Dollar Legs or We're Not Dressing, both made at Paramount within a few years, each of which it resembles. Even so, this curious flick presumably kept patrons happy at the time. It's like a big box of buttered popcorn, low on nutritional value, but perfectly okay for a summer evening, whether or not you're a tired businessman.

1930 was James Hall's busiest year, a popular leading man of the silents, talkies proved he had a pleasant, recordable voice and he could sing - an indispensable attribute in those crazy all talkie, all singie days. But even though he was the star of "Hell's Angels", by the end of the year he was on his way out - courtesy of alcohol and a reputation for being unreliable.It was advertised as "more fun than a circus" and had the usual 1930 Paramount cast - overworked supports Jack Oakie and "Skeets" Gallagher (who surprisingly didn't get a song to sing), slinky "other woman" Kay Francis, silly ass Englishman William Austin (who did get a song and was very funny) and personalities Eugene Palette and Charles Sellon. Beautiful Jeanette MacDonald who fitted into the zany proceedings perfectly, had created a splash in "The Love Parade" but musicals were on their way out and after this one Paramount dropped her. This film was so typical of what killed off the early musical cycle - stars stepping into production numbers at the drop of a hat, mediocre songs and indifferent choreography but in spite of all that this wacky film works and no one seems out of place.This terrifically fun film features MacDonald as Joan Wood, a costumer who loses her shop because all of her money is tied up in a South American bound revue with F.O.B. (Fast Outcurving Blondes)!!! James Hall plays her boyfriend Wally Wendell who has been disinherited by his grandfather (Sellon) because he refuses to marry slinky Constance (Francis) a childhood friend. Before she sails and for the edification of the tradesmen (accident prone Eugene Palette) she and Wally sing "My Mad Moment". Also shipboard are Wally's friend Basil (Austin) and taxi driver "Voltaire" (with non stop comment about his name)(Oakie) - on the run from, it seems, the whole New York police force. Typical of the weirdly conceived musical numbers is "It Seems to Be Spring" which starts as a rehearsal then becomes a wild life montage as MacDonald and Hall peel off their coats when it begins snowing!! It has some zany comedy - what starts as a couple of chaps throwing boaters into the ocean ends with a whole crowd and boaters going everywhere. The scene is set for Jack Oakie as he goes into "Joe Jazz" - which would have been great staged in the conventional way with Oakie doing his patter and the chorus cuties tapping on their boxes but there is just so much inter-cutting and over direction - the whole effect is just too busy.Suddenly the liner hits a wreck and our intrepid group find themselves shipwrecked on an island ruled by King Jerry (Gallagher) and his island sweeties ("they were part of the Virgin Islands but they drifted"!!) who have to dodge oil geysers and throw pearls around like marbles. The title song "Let's Go Native" is staged in a good innovative way as the dancers, strutting their stuff at the beach, are reflected in the water. And maybe the film's highlight - Kay Francis, in a low melodious voice, doing her own singing to "I've Gotta Yen For You". Francis who out shines MacDonald in looks and barely there costumes (Jeanette's outfit of seaweed and cocoanuts makes her look frumpy) had to be content with finding true love with "Joe Jazz".Even Paramount's musical misfires were often witty and now "Let's Go Native" can be looked as a satire to that whole crazy, lovable period.Very Recommended.

This is a movie in which movement is very much confined – although Leo McCarey's extremely skillful direction manages to disguise the fact that it was all filmed in front of an absolutely stationary camera enclosed in a sound-proof booth. But what the ingenious McCarey could not disguise was the washed-out quality of the filmed-under-glass photography. Never mind, if you like the players – and who could resist Jeanette MacDonald, teamed with Kay Francis? – you probably won't notice the consistently dull, murky texture of the toneless photography at all. Mind you, I'm not a Jack Oakie fan. A little of Jack goes a long way with me, and here he is allowed to really hog that stationary camera – especially bad of him when we would have all liked to have seen and heard a lot more of the movie's number one star, Jeanette MacDonald. Nevertheless, the screenplay does boast a few witty lines here and there. And what with Jeanette and Kay, it's not by any means a total loss!

This musical comedy defies its own plot and meanders on its merry way from Broadway to an ocean liner headed for Brazil but gets sunk, shipwrecking the stars on a remote island inhabited by natives who have been turned into showgirls by the previous shipwreck victim! With that said, there's little point in trying to follow this film but just sit back and enjoy the funny and sexy Jeanette MacDonald (yes she sings too) as she is romanced by James Hall (he also sings). Hall is mostly forgotten now but was a big star in late silent and early talkies (HELL'S ANGELS). Jack Oakie does to production numbers that are lively and well edited. Kay Francis shows up as an heiress and sings the lovely (I've Got a Yen for You). On the island they meet Skeets Gallagher who has turned the local girls into showgirls (Virginia Bruce and Iris Adrian among them).Also on hand are David Newell and and funny William Austin as Pistol. Then there's Eugene Palette as head of the moving crew that is repossessing MacDonald's furniture.MacDonald, Oakie, and Francis are terrific.