This is less of a musical than it is a boxing movie. I have seen at least 4 films about boxing (Rocky, Million Dollar Baby, The Fighter, and Girl Fight), which makes me practically an expert. At least on the difference between musicals and boxing. So, this is the story of a guy who falls into boxing because he almost runs over Jimmy Durante with a car.
/considers previous sentence.
Yeah, that's right. Joe Palooka is the son of famous boxer Pete Palooka who has been raised on a farm by Pete's estranged wife. Joe's mother hates boxing because it turned Pete into a skirt-chasing alcoholic. She wants Joe to stay on the farm. But one day, while delivering eggs to the train station, Joe almost runs over Jimmy Durante who happens to be a boxing manager. Durante immediately signs him to a contract and puts him in the ring with the current champion, William Cagney (James Cagney's brother). Normally, this would be a slaughter but Cagney is drunk during the fight and goes down after a punch to the stomach. Now Joe is the new Champ and with the title comes a nightclub singer played by Lupe Velez. A professional gold-digger, Lupe wraps Joe around her finger to the discomfiture of his manager. Bill Cagney catches Joe out with Lupe and manages to talk him into a re-match. Durante is understandably concerned about this because Joe can't actually fight and every match he's had has been rigged. Joe's mom shows up to try and break up his relationship with Lupe and Joe's dad shows up to train him.
Bet you're thinking "yeah, yeah, Joe suddenly shows enormous talent after being trained by his dad for a few days and wins the fight", aren't you?
Well you'd be wrong. Joe gets his ass kicked. His own manager bet against him in the fight, double-crossing a gangster to do it, and then absconds from town. He leaves the winnings to Joe, who retires to the farm with his mom and the girl next door to open a bed and breakfast. I'm not entirely certain what the moral is here.
Ok, I can admit it. I didn't really watch this one. I had just started it when my cousin called and, instead of hitting pause, I just hit mute. So by the time we were done talking, I had no friggin idea what was going on with this movie. I came in during some weird dance scene with women dressed as allegorical figures and then there was some comedy bit about men in a tailor's shop. Your guess is as good as mine. According to the DVD sleeve it's about a girl who gets discovered by talent scouts while working behind the counter at a sheet music store and becomes a Zeigfeld girl. So there you go then.
Yep, it's blackface. This was a bit of a shock to me. I had heard of the Amos 'n Andy radio program in the same way I had heard of other old things, in that I was aware that they existed but not exactly sure what they were about. Finding out that it was a comedy program based on culturally insensitive stereotypes was like finding out that your grandmother had a sex change.
The plot itself is horribly contrived. Maybe that's what passed for wit back in 1930? I don't know. I've seen Scooby-Doo episodes that were more well-thought-out.
This movie is the first to introduce Duke Ellington and his Cotton Club Band to American audiences, so there's that I guess. The movie doesn't linger very long on the actual black people since it invested so much of the budget on black greasepaint to make white people look like black people.
No comments:
Post a Comment