The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

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.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Despite the superior acting, singing, dancing; despite the quality of the music--which is excellent--like the other Freed/Berkeley productions featuring Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney--this movie cannot transcend its severe limitations. And the performance they deliver is excellent. Mickey Rooney channels FDR most excellently; Judy Garland mimics Eleanor most excellently. In Blackface, they seem to gather an energy and momentum that cannot be stopped or topped. And yet like the other 3--the movie simply grows tiresome--one viewing every ten years seems about right.And there really does need to be a note about Blackface. This was not intended to insult Black people--the Jim Crow laws did that. Mickey, Judy, Berkeley, Freed, etc. all would have grown up with seeing the Minstrel Show as entertainment; not for a moment would they have considered this demeaning to Black people. Those songs they sing in imitation of old vaudeville days--were very real in their mind; just consider your own life and realize how songs popular in our youth still stay within our mind as fresh well into our old age. So too with the Minstrel Shows--they would stay with the performers long after they had seen them.

It's an early Freed Unit picture, and among other Freed staples it has the work of Roger Edens, snatches of "Singing in the Rain" and "Good Morning," plus a whisper of "Broadway Rhythm." But it's kind of cuckoo. The director is Busby Berkeley, who wanted everything BIG even when the movie was supposed to be SMALL. Thus BB encourages the Mickster to go into his full Eugene O'Neill mode and he out-shouts everyone in the movie, including the hurricane! That is, when he's not on the verge of tears. If a woman had so over-heated, you'd say it's her time of the month; I can only guess Mick's ego went nuclear and BB wasn't interested enough to rein him in. He may not have even noticed. The most absurd stroke is that Rooney clearly believed he was a great impressionist too, and BB let him do crude impersonations of Gable and Barrymore, among others, that seem pointless and self- congratulatory. Judy is early Judy: shy, more Dorothy Gale than the windstorm of talent she'd become in later Freed masterpieces like "Meet Me in St. Louis" and so forth. Some other oddities, or at least they seem odd now: a big number in which Mick and the "kids" march through the streets of a Long Island coastal town, carrying torches and proclaiming that they are the future has an odd Nazi vibe to it. Creepy. Then there's baritone Doug McPhail who was five years from suicide; he's the next Nelson Eddy except there was no next Nelson Eddy which may be why he poisoned himself. Johhny Sheffield, later to be "Boy" to Johnny Weismuller's Tarzan, is briefly glimpsed and such MGM regs as Guy Kibbee and Margaret Hamilston are around to ground the movie in solid professionalism. It's sure watchable, even today, but now you think: these people thought they were riding the wave and the wave was coming in to crush THEM.

Babes in Arms (1939) ** 1/2 (out of 4) MGM musical was clearly produced to try and show off their young talent. Kids of vaudeville families need to raise some cash because the talkie's are killing their parents careers. Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland play two of the teens who decide to put on a show to raise money and show that vaudeville can be popular like it once was. I had heard a lot of great things about this film but in the end it was rather middle ground more than instant classic. There's a lot to enjoy here but in the end the story itself is rather weak. I guess you really can't blame the studio too much as they were clearly just using this as a way to check their young stars and see who could cut it and who couldn't. The funny thing is that we've got Rooney acting just like he did in BOYS TOWN and Garland acting sweet and innocent, which would become her staple. There's also Margaret Hamilton playing the same type of character that she'd also play in THE WIZARD OF OZ. Rooney and Garland do great work together and their chemistry really jumps off the screen and that includes the film's greatest moment where the two sing "Good Morning". "Oh, Susanna" makes for a very strange moment near the end where we get a minstrel show with Rooney and Garland in blackface. This sequence really stands out and is quite strange to watch today but if you watch enough of these old movies you'll see that many A-list stars appeared in blackface. Guy Kibbee, Charles Winninger, Henry Hull, Grace Hayes and Joseph Grehan round out the cast. One of the more interesting scenes is one where Rooney acts out a scene and impersonates Clark Gable and Lionel Barrymore. In the end, this is a pretty nice film that fans of the stars will want to see but this certainly isn't the masterpiece some make it out as.

For Mickey and Judy fans, Babes in Arms is an absolute must. It's the only one of their films in which one of the two got an Oscar nomination. Mickey Rooney was nominated for Best Actor, personally I think as an afterthought because his competition was Clark Gable for Gone With the Wind, Laurence Olivier for Wuthering Heights, James Stewart for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and the winner Robert Donat for Goodbue Mr. Chips. Not that Mickey's bad, but he really didn't belong with this field.What he and Judy do, they do better than anyone else, put on a show. In fact in this case the 'put on a show' gambit did originate in the original Broadway Musical. Babes in Arms was one of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's best shows it ran for 289 performances in the 1937 season and boasted such Rodgers&Hart classics as Johnny One Note, Way Out West, My Funny Valentine, I Wish I Were in Love Again all of which were discarded for the film. The Lady is a Tramp is only heard instrumentally, my guess is the Code frowned on that lyric. The title song and Where or When are retained. In fact when you come right down to it, only the basic idea the songs mentioned and a couple characters names came over from Broadway.Still Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed wrote Good Morning which is better known from Singin' in the Rain, but it was Judy and Mickey who introduced it here. And a whole lot of other Brown&Freed songs from MGM musicals got interpolated into the score.Douglas MacPhail and Betty Jaynes who were introduced in Sweethearts also are here and sing beautifully. They married, but the marriage and MacPhail's career fell apart and he committed suicide a few years later. He had a great baritone voice, what a shame. The following year he introduced my favorite Cole Porter song, I Concentrate On You in The Broadway Melody of 1940. This was the film Judy Garland did right after The Wizard of Oz and coming along right with her is Margaret Hamilton playing another Miss Gulch like character. One of those spinster ladies who forever pry into other people's business.Believe it or not there was still a lot of prejudice against theatrical people even in 1937. A lot of old vaudeville types like Charles Winninger, Rooney's father in the film, settle in the town of Seaport on Long Island and their presence apparently upsets the ruling families like Hamilton's. When times go bad and vaudeville goes to seed, things get kind of rough for them. The old timers try to take a last tour to raise some money, but instead it's the kids who are up to the latest trends in pop music who save the day.Guy Kibbee is in this also, playing against type as a wise and sympathetic judge, usually the parts MGM reserved for Lewis Stone or Lionel Barrymore. A more typical Kibbee type would be the oafish tycoon in 42nd Street, but he's fine here.Possibly director Busby Berkeley wanted Kibbee, maybe as a good luck charm from that other breakthrough musical of his from his days at Warner Brothers. Of course the musical numbers in the show are set with the usual Berkeley surrealism, a little tempered though from his high flying days at Warner Brothers. That same year Berkeley had done a surreal type number in the Jeanette MacDonald-Lew Ayres film Broadway Serenade and it laid an egg. Someone at MGM must have reined him in.Babes In Arms retains all its charms from 1939 mainly because Mickey Rooney is infectious and Judy Garland's singing is eternal.