Surprisingly incoherent and boring

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

This is an astonishing documentary that will wring your heart while it bends your mind

The acting in this movie is really good.

This early talkie musical in two-strip Technicolor is notable mainly as the first film to be choreographed by Busby Berkeley having previously done his stuff on the stage. His technique is noticeable even here in his early work with both the overhead shot of the dancers (which wasn't entirely his invention as some other previous sound films have this but this was one he frequently used) and the way he gets close-ups of all the pretty girls' faces when the camera pans on each one of them during their dances. This was also Eddie Cantor's first feature in the sound era. I had laughed plenty when first watching this on a VHS tape that I used to record off AMC when they were doing one of their Film Preservation Festivals of which this was a part of and I still did when watching this just now on YouTube. Even his blackface bit wasn't too offensive since he doesn't do the stereotypical dialect and does the shuffle for satirical purposes like most of his jokes concerning the pop culture of the time. He and Ethel Shutta as his nurse make a fine comedy team here. The story of a half-breed in love with a white woman which involves the romantic leads reflects the prejudicial attitudes of the time especially when it's conveniently revealed at the end that the man was actually a white infant left on the reservation just so they can marry without disapproval from the bride's father. So that story did not appeal to me then nor now but since Cantor is front and center most of the time, he made most of the picture go down easier for me. Oh, and I always love when he's performing "Makin' Whoopee" so there's that...

Loved it! What a treat this was. Great color, costumes and sets and of course Eddie Cantor, who now ranks as one of my favorites.Surreal plot if full of schtick and is VERY non-PC (another reason to love it) as Blacks, Indians, Jews, Gays, and Goys get lampooned by Cantor and company.Several terrific songs by Cantor, "Making Whoopee" and "My Baby Just Cares for Me," and a couple of excellent production numbers by Busby Berkley. Ethel Shutta (pronounced shoo-tay) was smashing in her "Stetson" number. I wish it had been longer.Among the show girls and dancers are Betty Grable, Ann Sothern, Virginia Bruce, Claire Dodd, and possibly Jane Wyman, and Dean Jagger (of all people) plays a deputy.The typical 20s romantic subplot between white Eleanor Hunt and Indian Paul Gregory is a drag and is the same things we've seen in the early Marx Brothers and Wheeler and Woolsey comedies.Spencer Charters plays Underwood, Marian Marsh is his daughter, Jack Rutherford is the sheriff, etc.The colors are great, the costumes fun. Flo Ziegfeld was involved show there are plenty of show girls in outrageous costumes.Shutta is a find, but it's Eddie Cantor's show all the way and he's very very funny.

I had my reservations about this movie before I watched it. But, when the movie ended, I was very surprised by how entertained I was.The storyline to this movie is very simple. Henry Williams (Eddie Cantor) elopes with Sally Morgan (Eleanor Hunt), who is already engaged to Sheriff Bob Wells (Jack Rutherford). After Bob Wells finds out that Sally and Henry eloped, him and his buddies head out to find Henry and Sally, and they plan to hang Henry as punishment for running off with the Sheriff's fiancé, and the comedy goes on from there.Like I said, it is a very entertaining film. Eddie Cantor shows his true comedic talent (as always) in this film. I would highly suggest this film. It is very humorous and entertaining. And it's got some great routines.

WHOOPEE (United Artists, 1930), directed by Thornton Freeland, subtitled "A musical comedy of the great wide west," produced in collaboration with Florenz Ziegfeld and Samuel Goldwyn, is another one of those reworking Broadway shows to come out of Hollywood during the early days of talkies. Headed by Broadway's own Eddie Cantor, with co-stars, many of whom recreating their stage roles, WHOOPEE ranks one of the better stage-to-screen musicals released during the 1929-30 season. It's also the film responsible in elevating Cantor into major box office attraction. Not only was this his first for Samuel Goldwyn, but the introduction of choreographer Busby Berkeley to the motion picture screen. While Berkeley's now famous dance direction trademarks are evident here, they're far from the best to what he later created at the Warner Brothers studios in the 1930s.Set in an Arizona dude ranch, Sally Morgan (Eleanor Hunt) is about to marry Sheriff Bob Wells (John Rutherford), though she really loves Wanenis (Paul Gregory), a young Indian living on an Indian reservation near her father's ranch. Because Wanenis is of Indian blood, it is not permissible for a white girl to marry a "red skin." Also staying on the ranch is Henry Williams (played by Eddie Cantor with horn rim glasses), a hypochrondiac pill popper from the east, there for a rest cure, accompanied by his nurse, Mary Custer (Ethel Shutta), who not only feeds him medicine, but happens to be in love with him. Unable to go on with the wedding, Sally arranges for Henry to drive her away in his ran-shackle Ford, leaving Wells and guests at the altar. Since Wells refuses to take "No" for an answer, he goes in hot pursuit of them, as does Miss Custer, leading them all to another ranch, leading to complications, songs and dance numbers.The musical program includes: "The Cowboy Number" (sung by Betty Grable); "I'll Still Belong to You" (sung by Paul Gregory); "Makin' Whoopee" (sung by Eddie Cantor); "The Mission Number" (sung by chorus); "A Girl Friend of a Boy Friend of Mine" and "My Baby Just Cares for Me" (both sung by Cantor); "Stetson" (sung by Ethel Shutta); "I'll Still Belong to You" (reprise by Paul Gregory); "The Song of the Setting Sun" (sung by Chief Caupolian) and "My Baby Just Cares for Me" (reprise by Cantor).Of the song tunes, only three show off the Berkeley style: First "The Cowboy Number," featuring two overhead camera shots of dancing cowboys and girls doing circular formations shots climaxed by snake-like effects; "Stetson" having cowgirls dancing while passing their hats to one another, followed by individual close-ups and camera panning through a leg tunnel; and "The Setting Sun," highlighted with one overhead camera shot of Indian doing formations with their feather hats. Among those in the supporting cast are Albert Hackett as Chester Underwood; Marian Marsh as Harriet Underwood; the George Olson Band, and the 1930 Goldwyn Girls (the most famous one here being Betty Grable).WHOOPEE, the only Cantor musical reproduced from stage to screen, is a prestigious production. Done in early two-strip Technicolor, considering how many early Technicolor musicals are lost, it's fortunate this one has survived. Unlike the subsequent Cantor/Goldwyn musicals, WHOOPEE never played on commercial television in the 1960s and '70s. It was by 1980 did it finally turn up on cable television before turning up on home video in 1986. While the video transfer to this film is excellent, the color on the TV prints are not as good. It's reflection of the times by ways of making reference to popular hit names as Lawrence Tibbett and Amos and Andy are definitely names that would be of a loss today. Cantor's nervous wreck characterization would be carbon copies by future film comedians, especially Danny Kaye, who's Samuel Goldwyn debut, UP IN ARMS (1944), was a partial reworking to WHOOPEE, though not its remake.As with other Cantor comedies of the day, some gags are humorous (such as Cantor and character actor Spencer Charters comparing their operations, a gimmick they briefly reprized in Cantor's second Goldwyn musical, PALMY DAYS in 1931), others don't come off as well. One low point occurs when Henry (Cantor), disguised in black-face, calls out to Sally Morgan,. Failing to recognize him, she responds very bluntly, "How dare YOU speak to me!" Quite an uneasy feeling for its viewers that could have been handled differently, with her politely replying, "Do we know each other?" Ethel Shutta, repeating her Miss Custer role from the stage version, is a fine comedienne reminiscent to Warner Brothers' own Winnie Lightner. Unlike Lightner, who appeared in numerous films of the early 1930s, Shutta made this her only screen role during the "golden age of Hollywood."When WHOOPEE became one of a handful of Eddie Cantor musicals to play on cable channel's American Movie Classics in the 1990s, at one point, host Bob Dorian, before the presentation of the film, asked his viewers to watch the film as it was originally intended and not be offended by some racial slurs, jokes, and Cantor disguised in black-face to keep from being arrested. In spite of how viewers might have felt towards this film then and now, WHOOPEE, played longer and more frequently on AMC (1992 to 1998) than any other Cantor musical. WHOOPEE is one of those Broadway transfers to give contemporary audiences a basic idea of the kind of entertainment endured many generations ago. WHOOPEE, as it stands, remains an interesting antique. (***)