Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Fantastic!

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

This Vitaphone sound short has been recently restored. On other Vitaphone film of the Revelers has not yet been restored--and hopefully it will be in the future. The film consists of the quintet dressed in tuxes sitting around a piano and singing three songs--a large number for this sort of short. They sing their hits "Mine", "Dinah" and "No Foolin'". As far as the style goes, it was very popular in the 20s and 30s and the group had been around for almost a decade before this film was made. However, it's very dated today--even for one of these Vitaphone experimental films. Their harmony is quite nice and I enjoyed the last two songs the most, but it's a hard sell to most audiences to see and actually like this sort of thing today.UPDATE: When I watched this again tonight, I found I enjoyed the Revelers much more. Their harmonies were lovely and I found myself bopping along to their music! Because of this, my score is a bit higher this time.

The Revelers (1927) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Franklyn Baur, Lewis James, Frank Black, Wilfred Glenn and Elliott Shaw make up The Revelers who perform three songs in this early Vitaphone short. "Mine," "No Foolin'," and "Dinah" are the three songs performed and ones interest in this type of film will certainly determine your entertainment value. THE REVELERS wouldn't make another appearance in a film for another decade but for the most part I found this short to be entertaining enough. Of the songs performed I'd say "Dinah" was the best and most catchy, although I still wouldn't go searching for a copy of it to carry with me. The setting is pretty simple as most of these shorts were as the five men are just sitting around the first few seconds before they then take center stage to perform the music. It appears that all five are at least comfortable in front of the camera, although the man on the right appears to be smiling way too much. Fans of these early Vitaphone shorts should enjoy this.