Overrated

An action-packed slog

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

I first saw this movie as a Blockbuster rental with my husband and his late mother - 25 years ago. TCM aired it recently, and we recorded it and watched it on a Saturday night (it IS rather long, at 2 hours and 12 minutes!). I'm not a person who likes to watch movies (or plays, or TV shows) over and over again; when I was a young teenager my girlfriends and I would usually sit through THREE consecutive showings of a film - that must have "cured" me. After 25 years I did remember the highlights (even though my MIL did chat quite a bit during the movie), but I was surprised that I hadn't realized what a great job John Barrymore did! I had always considered him a bombastic stage actor, playing to the back rows of the second balcony. He is so SUBTLE and SINISTER in this. For this viewing I saw Maytime on a pretty-good quality Samsung wall-hung TV, but I truly would love to see it on the big screen, in a theater. The May Day scenes especially deserve that. The lack of color doesn't bother me, though it does remind me of Irving Thalberg's too-early death.

Having seen Sweethearts and Rose-Marie and liking them, I saw Maytime expecting to like it. But I found myself loving it. Of these three, Maytime for me has the most believable story, it is poignant and heartfelt yet heart warming too.That's not all though. The production values are rich and beautiful, the songs especially Sweetheart(which I can't get enough of) are superb same with the direction, and the script is sweet and poignant.The performances are wonderful too. Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy work so well together and sing stunningly, while John Barrymore gives my personal favourite support performance of any support actor/actress in a MacDonald-Eddy film.In conclusion, I loved it. 10/10 Bethany Cox

This film was one of Irving Thalberg's personal projects. He had planned to make it a color film, but then he died of a heart attack in 1936 and the footage that had been shot was scrapped. A year later the project was resurrected resulting in the film we have today. It features the great voices of Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy, lavish production values, some great examples of McDonald's singing in her prime, and one of the last great roles the legendary John Barrymore ever had. Although the movie is 72 years old, I'll just warn you that what could pass for spoilers are in the rest of the review.I have the VHS tape, but I also saw it on TCM one night as part of their guest programmers' month. During the film's introduction, the guest host said something that forced me to look at this film in a new light. She said "it's a lot like Titanic". You know, she was right. In many ways if you delete the music, make the site of the entire movie a doomed ship, and make John Barrymore a worse shot, you have James Cameron's Titanic. It makes me wonder how much he was influenced by this movie when he made his own film.Where the films part ways is that this film more accurately portrays the attitudes of the times in which it was set than Titanic did. The love story is very moving and the music just adds to its poignancy. Also, John Barrymore turns in a perfect supporting performance as Jeanette's patron turned husband who realizes his wife doesn't love him but doesn't realize why until he sees Eddy and McDonald onstage together during a performance. Barrymore says few lines in this film, but his mannerisms and facial expressions say it all. If the ending of the movie doesn't tug at your heart, I don't know what will. Highly recommended.

"Maytime" is, I believe, the most popular film of that very popular singing team of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. The story, based on the Romberg operetta, tells the story in flashback of a beautiful young opera singer (MacDonald), under the wing of her teacher (John Barrymore) who in spite of herself falls in love with a baritone (Eddy) though she's promised to marry her teacher. She chooses loyalty and career over true love, with tragic results.This isn't the most feminist film you'll ever see, as the elderly Miss Morrison (MacDonald) tells her story to a young woman who wants to throw her boyfriend over and pursue her career in New York. Nevertheless, it's the setting for a touching tale and gorgeous music sung by MacDonald and Eddy.MacDonald was beautiful and a fine actress, and she had parts of her voice, particularly the middle range, that were absolutely beautiful. Her high notes and singing technique - well, not so great. Some of it was the way female singers were taught to sing "white" high notes - backing off of them and straightening the tone, and part of it was the unsophisticated recording devices. The difference in placement between her voice and Eddy's, who sang a frontal placement all the way up, is remarkable. The montages show the great female star singing Trovatore and Wagner - not with that lyric coloratura voice, she wasn't. Eddy sings magnificently throughout, though he was never the presence that MacDonald was.Have some tissues ready. It's a lovely story, and the acting is very good. MacDonald is very touching and Barrymore is appropriately villainous and also underplayed, for those who think he was a big ham.It's one of those films you'll always remember, especially the ending, and that's what the film is about - remembrance.