Sometimes you find a thoroughbred in a pack of barking mutts, but sometimes you also find a mongrel. That is the case in this very weak Universal musical, made when there were dozens of them filmed each year, some with quality, others quite mediocre. When they took time to come up with an amusing comical script with some good songs, they had a surprise on their hand. But more than half of the time, they were less than fair, and in a few instances, downright horrible.
While Bob Crosby has had some luck on screen, this B musical would never push him on the map like his brother Bing. The problem is that he has weak material and the story is unbelievably ridiculous. Grace McDonald and Betty Kean try their hardest as a sister act to provide some musical amusement, but their specialties just seem to be truly out of place for the war years, especially since Universal Studios was still turning out Andrews sisters musicals on a regular basis. Those musicals are classics in comparison to what occurs in this one.
Alan Mowbray is another insufferable boorish character, and Walter Catlett is truly out of place as a snake oil salesman. The saving grace is young Freddie Stewart who would go on to the "Teenagers" series and manages to steal the film with his young charm. Some of the musical numbers are downright cringe-worthy (particularly the hideous "I Need Vitamin U"), there's an embarrassing sequence with a woman doing a seal act, and Catlett's medicine man seems like something out of the early 20th Century. At just an hour long, this deserves to be quickly forgotten.
While Bob Crosby has had some luck on screen, this B musical would never push him on the map like his brother Bing. The problem is that he has weak material and the story is unbelievably ridiculous. Grace McDonald and Betty Kean try their hardest as a sister act to provide some musical amusement, but their specialties just seem to be truly out of place for the war years, especially since Universal Studios was still turning out Andrews sisters musicals on a regular basis. Those musicals are classics in comparison to what occurs in this one.
Alan Mowbray is another insufferable boorish character, and Walter Catlett is truly out of place as a snake oil salesman. The saving grace is young Freddie Stewart who would go on to the "Teenagers" series and manages to steal the film with his young charm. Some of the musical numbers are downright cringe-worthy (particularly the hideous "I Need Vitamin U"), there's an embarrassing sequence with a woman doing a seal act, and Catlett's medicine man seems like something out of the early 20th Century. At just an hour long, this deserves to be quickly forgotten.
