it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

This classic old movie talks about people working on a play. The first half of this movie isn't great as it just features them preparing for the play. It's not bad. We do some good character build up and it probably makes the second half all the more rewarding. The second half is them actually showing us the play in its entirety, more or less. The buildup is so good it's what makes the overall movie great. We get to see all the great sets, song numbers and wonderful camera angles. Would it have worked better if the whole movie was the play? Maybe.You get more anticipation this way and the payoff is great. There were a lot of these musicals made in the early 1930's and I'm glad to see one of the most well known. Wait, 42nd Street? So that's where Douglas Adams got the number 42 from! I admit I was afraid they'd get more into the outside plot at the end, but it actually ended right there. I'm glad, because it's great to see a movie that's so well organized. I appreciate it for setting up future musicals too. ***1/2

. . . in Warner Bros.' 1930s musical warning note to We People of America's Far Future, 42nd STREET. Widely dismissed in its day as fatuous fluff mixed with empty eye candy, 42nd STREET actually is a carefully crafted clarion call for the USA to reject the Siren Song of that broken-down, many times bankrupt scam artist sham, Donald J. Rump, represented here by Ruby\Kellyanne's "Pretty Lady" director "Julian Marsh." A tired old White guy, just like Rump, the worn-out Marsh simply wants to exploit the Youth around him to feather his own nest. Like Rump, Marsh has well-known ties to New York City mobsters. Like Rump, he expects the random women around him to be pleased as punch when he plants his pudgy geezer lips onto their mouths with no warning at all. Like Rump, Marsh faces even odds as to whether his dissolute womanizing career has left him with enough oomph in his geriatric carcass to even survive his Opening Night. As has been the case since Cassandra warbled her warnings to the Ancient Greeks, prophets always preach to Deaf Ears in their own Homelands. America ignored Warner's 42nd STREET Rump Warning, and now all of us are going to be stuck with the bill.

42nd STREET is grounded in reality from its very first scene. The Depression had devastated Broadway and by 1932 even the lower priced film industry was finding its very survival threatened by the hard times. It was no joke that a successful actress (Bebe Daniels) would submit to an affair with a slimy tycoon (Guy Kibbee) in order to secure the backing for a new production. Nor was it a mere fancy that a famous stage director (Warner Baxter) would find himself penniless by way of the stock market, nor that he would resort to strong arm tactics to ensure a show's success. And that chorus girls would consider themselves lucky to have the opportunity of driving themselves into the ground when the real alternative was starvation? As Ginger Rogers would say in the next Berkeley extravaganza: "It's the Depression, dearie."This inherent grittiness of 42nd STREET was and would remain rare in what are normally straight 'musical comedies'. The alleged escapism of thirties' movies is much overstated. I doubt that any era's films were as obsessive about depicting the suffering engendered by contemporary conditions (certainly not our own, but that's another story). However, plots can always be slotted into a relatively small number of patterns. 42nd STREET in general gives us the story of a disparate group of people being brought together by a hard-driving leader with a vision in order to accomplish something, in this case putting on a show. In a military context you would have a disparate group of soldiers being molded into a unit by a hard-driving drill sergeant. Or the project could be some sort of business, or a political campaign. In 42nd STREET, it's show business.Putting the emphasis on the leader gives one sort of story, often a biography, but despite the fact that Warner Baxter's character probably remains its most important, 42nd STREET always keeps its emphasis on the process and eventually on the show itself. Its heart, I think, remains always the chorus girls pounding themselves into exhaustion in one montage after another. Until its final twenty minutes, 42nd STREET's plot consists of various character vignettes garnished with some very sharp comedy, particularly from our acid-tongued 'Greek Chorus', Lorraine (Una Merkel) and Anytime Annie (Ginger Rogers), the all underlined with a barely concealed desperation.42nd STREET's various plot elements were not all that original at the time and of course have become far less so in the intervening years; however, its emotional treatment of these elements is anything but cliché-ish. Its Warren and Dubin musical score is excellent, Berkeley's production numbers may give us our first taste of his surrealistic genius (I haven't seen his Eddie Cantor movies so I'm not sure about that), the cast is a brilliant mixture of veterans (Baxter in the performance of his career, and maybe the same could be said of Daniels) along with rising young talent (Dick Powell, Ginger Rogers, Ruby Keeler). This movie wasn't exactly the inventor of the clichés, it was the film that used them so memorably that they became set in our collective mind.There have been few musicals so wonderful as 42nd STREET.

"Sawyer, you listen to me, and you listen hard!" Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter) exclaims with exasperation to his leading lady, Peggy Sawyer (Ruby Keeler). "Two hundred people, two hundred jobs, two hundred thousand dollars, five weeks of grind and blood and sweat depend upon you!"Julian Marsh is the kind of stage director that forces his dancers to stay up hours upon hours to perfect a particular dance routine; so imagine his anxiety when Peggy, who has only wafted through the chorus line in her short theater career, is, out of anguish, cast as the female lead after the real star (Bebe Daniels) twists her ankle.In the wholesome sheen of 42nd Street, of course Peggy will do a stupendous job, of course become a star, and of course end up in the arms of the man of her dreams. But as the quintessential, and perhaps one of the first, "behind-the-scenes" musicals, 42nd Street is a breezy and often times impressive film, a popcorn flick that benefits from its extraordinarily bubbly cast and Busby Berkeley's famed choreography. Until the last ten minutes of the film, there is nothing in store that we haven't seen before. But I'll be damned if those last ten minutes aren't some of the best last ten minutes the musical genre has ever seen.The first half goes by wearing Depression-era movie glitter as a jacket, warmed with romantic misunderstandings, catty one-liners, and conflicts that most likely seemed ridiculous to the many Hooverville housed audience members. All the fluff eventually seems like a pastime when putting the closing number into perspective; considering every single song, dance, and bit of spectacle is saved until later, the stuff that takes place in reality rather than the realm of the stage is only slightly unexciting. The far better Gold Diggers of 1933 had a big closer, true, but it also gave us sneak peeks of the extravaganza early on, and the cast, which featured comedic champs Joan Blondell and Aline MacMahon, added an extra zip that made everything just a little more self-aware.The second half is when the goods kick in, and boy, do they kick. Several of the actors are finally given the chance to show off their hidden musical talents, and Berkeley's seminal routines are put on display with startling gusto. A master of creating kaleidoscopic shapes with his dancers, the aerial shots are staggering, with close-ups transforming his subjects into pieces of an accomplished puzzle. Months from now, you and I will not remember the romance between Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, the underuse of Ginger Rogers, or the music; the routines are what make 42nd Street the classic it is today. In films like this, you can save the dialogue for later. Because we want dessert immediately; dinner can wait. Read more reviews at petersonreviews.com