Post by rmichaelpyle on Mar 4, 2009 6:23:15 GMT -6
They say, "One man's trash is another man's treasure". Well, it can also be said that, "One man's Leonard Maltin "2½" stars is another man's "Bomb!". Last night I watched "Caravan" (1934) with Loretta Young and Charles Boyer, along with a stunning cast of other characters, from Phillips Holmes and Jean Muir to Eugene Pallette and C. Aubrey Smith, Billy Bevan and Louise Fazenda to Dudley Digges, Noah Beery, Sr. and Charley Grapewin. Now - this was supposedly a MUSICAL!! What began with a cartoonish group of caravaning gypsy's across a night sky turned into the longest unending film in the history of film, bar none! Do you remember "The Brain that Wouldn't Die"? Well, this show wouldn't die! The end was finally nearing, so I thought, but the song being played just kept on and on and on and on... Finally - and you won't believe this because I certainly didn't - a night sky full of stars appears and suddenly the stars spell out "FINIS" in French!! Were I to opine in the common vernacular of the back street, I would say that this film SUCKED!! But, unfortunately, that would be an insult to vacuum cleaners which do a much finer job. This wasn't even a good vacuum, although I felt as if I were in one. Well, Bogart - my favorite - had his "Swing Your Lady" - arguably the worst film ever made - and Young and Boyer had their "Caravan". This was directed, by the way, by that well-known (NOT!) director Erik Charrel the same time he was making the French version. I'm sure there were deaths in France from watching that one, too!
Whoever came up with the idea of Loretta Young and Charles Boyer in a musical -- well! Talk about not being clear on the concept. 
The only comparable turkey I can think of is Cybill Shepherd and Burt Reynolds in At Long Last Love. Burt's singing voice belongs in a frog pond. As for his "dancing," one critic described it as "a drunk trying to stomp out cockroaches." 
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