Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

best movie i've ever seen.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

On the Riviera is the third film made from a stage play called The Red Cat, the other two being L'homme des Folies Bergère (1935) with Maurice Chevalier and That Night in Rio (1941) with Don Ameche. The plot is an example of a genre that goes right back to Plautus and Shakespeare: the comedy and confusion that result when two people who happen to look identical keep getting mistaken for each other. In this case, the two people (both played by Danny Kaye) are a famous French transatlantic aviator and an American entertainer playing a club on the French Riviera. This seems like a very obscure film: it's not found in any of the half-dozen standard film guides I happen to have, though it's in IMDb.The film, directed by Hollywood workmanlike director Walter Lang (who made a number of other 50s musicals, like this one now mostly forgotten,) is a semi-musical; that is, there are plenty of song and dance numbers, but they are all stage performances. The most interesting aspect of the film is its display of Kaye's multiple talents as a singer, dancer, comic and impressionist -- he's the sort of performer popular in the thirties through early sixties, but now seems an almost extinct species.The film is an interesting period piece for its sumptuous female fashions and as an early example of what would become mainstream American Hollywood musical entertainment, and if you are interested in those topics, or in Kaye, this will be worth watching. Others may find it only moderately entertaining. There is some impressive landscape photography of the Riviera, though Hitchcock did this better in To Catch a Thief.The 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Blu-Ray DVD is of good audio and video quality.

There is probably more remakes left in The Red Cat, the play on which Folies Bergere, That Night In Rio, and now On The Riviera is based. Danny Kaye in this film steps into the shoes of first Maurice Chevalier and Don Ameche and they fit well.Like his predecessors Kaye plays dual roles, an American entertainer who includes impressions in his act and a French industrialist who was an air ace a World War ago. The entertainer has Corinne Calvet in his act as an assistant and the industrialist is married to Gene Tierney.When the industrialist makes a secret trip to Great Britain for some financing his associates are left holding the bag with another French industrialist. They hire Kaye the entertainer to impersonate the industrialist and the results, especially with the interaction between the women are hilarious.I'm surprised that Danny Kaye never thought to play the Dromios in a film version of A Comedy Of Errors. With his friend Laurence Olivier as Antipholus it would have been a classic.On The Riviera got two Oscar nominations for Art&Set Direction and for musical scoring by Alfred Newman. Sylvia Fine also known as Mrs. Kaye wrote most of the score and Popo The Puppet got Kaye a lot of success with his children fans. But the hit was the oldtime ragtime song Ballin' The Jack revived for On The Riviera.This film holds up well and one of these days Robin Williams will see this as a property for him. As it is three fine films have been made already.

First of all, I must confess that I haven't seen the original Chevalier film on which "On the Riviera" is based. However, Fox recycled the plot before this film for "That Night in Rio" with Don Ameche, Alice Faye, and Carmen Miranda in the Danny Kaye, Gene Tierney, and Corinne Calvet roles. I think "Rio" is far superior to "Riviera." The plot is much better paced, less frantic and frenetic (although that may simply be the difference between Ameche and Kaye as performers). For me, a little Kaye "shtick" goes a long way, and the more he uses it, the less amused I get. In this film, he lays it on with a trowel. Fox dipped into the well once too often. The only saving grace is the lustrous Tierney in luscious color.

Danny Kaye has made many good movies, but "On the Riviera" and "White Christmas" are my favorites. Danny Kaye plays two men who look alike but have different personalities and lives. One is a philandering industrialist, who is elegant, and the other is an entertainer, who is silly. Each man has a beautiful woman in his life: the industrialist's wife (Gene Tierney) and the entertainer's girlfriend (Corinne Calvet). Both women are funny and this is their best comedy.