Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

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

...and a great film come-back vehicle for Al Jolson. This film was released on March 31, 1934, just three months before the production code began to be enforced. As such, it is a buffet of items one would never see on film again in the U.S. until the 1960's - adultery as comedy, gigolos, a pair of men dancing with Jolson making the remark "Boys will be Boys", a dancing act involving a woman being whipped, what amounts to house-sponsored prostitution to keep the Wonder Bar's male patrons amused, a suicide that everyone knows about in advance and nobody bothers to stop, and a murder that goes unpunished and even undetected for that matter. However, this film is much more than just a last hurrah for the pre-code years, and I found it quite enjoyable. It is an intersection of Grand Hotel, the world's greatest entertainer, Al Jolson, and that genius of choreography, Busby Berkeley, with plenty of action and snappy dialogue to keep things going.Of course, it is very ironic that the one part of the film that leaves everyone shocked today is probably one of the few things that the Hays Office had no problem with - that well-known musical number "Going to Heaven on a Mule". It is exactly what you would expect when the over-the-top style of Busby Berkeley's choreography meets the minstrel tradition of Al Jolson's musical style. Every racial stereotype in the book is in this musical number, and it was omitted on the VHS release of this film but was kept in the laser disc Jolson set. That's probably because laser disc was seen as specialty product whereas the VHS release was seen as something for consumption by the masses. The Warner Archives is also seen as a niche market, so the number is included in that DVD-R release. I am glad of that, because the present will never be made better by trying to erase or adjust the past, no matter how uncomfortable it may make people feel.Highly recommended as great classic movie fun, if you can just remember that this film was made in 1934, not last week.

I am very fond of Al Jolson, But the only film I have seen with him in it is this one. I like it quite a lot but I found it very strange; what the hell was a murder story doing in a 1930's musical? Well never mind about that, just enjoy the rest of the film, with its fantastic score by Harry Warren (music) and Al Dubin (lyrics). But there is yet another thing which I wasn't particularly fond of in this film which was Dick Powell who, I think, is overrated. If you don't like minstrels then don't see this film (it has Al Jolson in it). Despite being a great lover of music, I am not terribly fond of some of Busby Berkely's stuff, His dance sequences for example, tend to be a bit over-long. Despite the handicaps that I have written here, this film is very watchable. Enjoy. 8/10

'Wonder Bar' stars Al Jolson in a film with more plot than usual, and it's one of his best efforts. Jolson's films are notoriously tainted by racist blackface routines: in 'Wonder Bar', this material is completely avoided until the very end of the film, when we get a long blackface number called "Goin' to Heaven on a Mule". If you fast-forward through this to get to the last few minutes of the film (tying up some loose ends in the plot), you'll be better off.Several Warner Brothers movies of this period ('Two Seconds', 'Central Park') featured a 'book-ends' structure in which the film's opening shot and closing shot are the same camera set-up. We get a variation on that structure here. The first couple of reels of 'Wonder Bar' set up the conflicts between the characters. Then, about a third of the way into the film, we get the first 'book-end' as Jolson's nightclub (the Wonder Bar) opens for the evening: a liveried doorman unrolls a red carpet and salutes us. At the very end of the film, after the Wonder Bar has closed for the night, the doorman rolls up the carpet and salutes us again.I'm a long-time fan of Dolores del Rio, an immensely talented actress who was also exceedingly sexy. Here, she gives the best (and sexiest) performance I've ever seen from her, as a cabaret dancer who is bullied and exploited by her dance partner (the very hissable Ricardo Cortez). Jolson is in love with del Rio (this is cleverly depicted with an unusual visual device), but she doesn't return his love.Dick Powell is less annoying and less obtrusive than usual. Ditto the raccoon-eyed Kay Francis, whom I always dislike. SPOILERS COMING. There's an amusing subplot with four Warners stalwarts (Guy Kibbee, Hugh Herbert, Louise Fazenda and the splendid Ruth Donnelly) as two stodgy married couples on holiday. The husbands conspire to sneak out for a night on the tiles while the wives are asleep; the wives plot to sneak out while the husbands are asleep. Unfortunately, after setting up this very funny situation, there's no pay-off for it.Veteran character actor Robert Barrat plays a role well outside his usual range, with only partial success. Somewhat implausibly, Jolson allows Barrat to commit suicide because this will help Jolson conceal a murder committed by del Rio. We're meant to admire Jolson for this.I shan't comment on the protracted blackface routine late in the film, except to say that it's a *dull* number apart from its offensiveness. The effeminate tap-dancer Hal LeRoy performs, nearly naked, in blackface and full body make-up. Instead of painting a white man to look like a black man, couldn't Warners have hired a black tap-dancer instead? Plenty of black men were much better dancers than Hal LeRoy.Much earlier in the film, there's one very surprising gag involving Jolson and two gay men. During his long career as a stage performer, Jolson frequently worked 'lavender' material into his act. Like the British comedian Max Miller, Jolson was a heterosexual performer who deliberately led audiences to suspect he might be homosexual. (Apparently the rumours were good for the box office.) Jolson employed 'camp' humour and gay jokes frequently onstage, but so far as I know 'Wonder Bar' is the only time he ever did this in a film. I'll rate 'Wonder Bar' 8 points out of 10. I was tempted to knock off several points for the blackface routine, but I put them back on again for Dolores del Rio's very erotic performance.

In the series of Warner Bros/Busby Berkeley musicals stretching from 42ND Street to Varsity Show, Wonder Bar remains the least appreciated (and perhaps the least seen). It's quite remarkable in that the plot, aside from a few opening scenes, keeps "real time" and relationships begin/end, lives are lost, and and all sorts of minor dramas are tied up neatly in one evening at a nightclub.Al Jolson, as the club owner, takes some getting used to, but he's actually more low-key than usual here--and even a bit touching in scenes. And how fabulous do Kay Francis and Delores Del Rio look in this film? Who cares if they can't act--they do lots of radiant posing and wear gorgeous outfits. There are some bits with Louise Fazenda and a much younger man that left me gasping. The brief (and very funny) "gay scene" and hunky Ricardo Cortez whipping Del Rio also had me shaking my head in disbelief. Anyone care to count how many censorship Code infractions are contained in this film? It raised a stir with the Catholic church and Legion of Decency, and I've read a memo somewhere that some audiences reportedly were appalled by the goings-on in this movie (it was a hit though--grossing nearly a million dollars for the studio).If you're reading about this movie you already know about the musical numbers--"Don't Say Goodnight", with its octagon of mirrors and chorus stretching into infinity, and "Goin to Heaven on a Mule", with the blackface angels and dancing watermelon. "Mule" is beyond belief--it must've been a killer on the big screen. Viewers are still offended by it, and certainly should be--all it is missing is a Grand Dragon.A witty, fascinating, naughty, beautifully photographed film. If 42ND Street is the king of the WB/Busby Berkeley crown, Wonder Bar is the banished, scandalous cousin that is inevitably more fun.