What makes it different from others?

The greatest movie ever made..!

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Spoilers. Observations. Opinions. Ruby does not dance. I love dancing. Lose a point. Black and white. Lose another point. Balance eight out of ten possible points. This means that the film rates pretty high, however. Powell could sing. Ruby could also, better than I expected, but of course no famous warbler like Powell. I wanted Ruby to dance when she, as the general, has all the men gathered around her desk. No dice. She does not. Oh, well. Dick is pretty rude in much of this film. He needed his ears boxed by Scrapper. He keeps getting away with wrong things. He is Mr. Teflon. Lots of things bounce right off him. Wrongdoings just don't give him much comeuppance. Worse for me, yet, is when Powell went from musicals to dramas and gumshoe boring filmic outings. The Powell of 42nd Street fades from fun juvenile to wallflower aged oldster sexless senior citizen, it seems like. I saw Ross Alexander in Midsummer Night's Dream. Was Powell also in that? Anyway, in real life Alexander later calls an end to his own life. This is such a shame. Ross is a lot of fun in Flirtation Walk. This film was Great Depression era. Audiences needed cheering up. Besides all of the serious parts of this story, the cadets are tasked with putting on an annual show. Did I hear Ruby talk about The New Deal?The characters were in military training for some future war; 1941 and Pearl Harbor wouldn't be here for awhile. Powell early on is regular enlisted, trying to move up through the ranks the old- fashioned way. He then goes to West Point, however, and through hard work strives to become an officer and a gentleman. Scrapper has predicted Powell will eventually outrank him, and this is what happens. The show: I knew that the second I heard about the 100th Night Show, I remembered the 1950 film outing called West Point Story, starring James Cagney, Doris Day, Gordon MacRae, Virginia Mayo, Gene Nelson and Alan Hale, Jr. Jimmy, a volatile washed-up Broadway director and dancer, gets roped into traveling to West Point and training the students to do the annual 100th Night Show. Doris and MacRae sing about the Kissing Rock, and Gene Nelson does some great tap dancing. Hale is dressed up like a huge woman, and Jimmy does an awesome tap dance when Gene gets injured. Therefore, part of 1950 West Point Story I feel is some sort of remake of 1934 Flirtation Walk, 16 years earlier. One is pre-war, and one is post-World War Two, with a little of the Korean War Era thrown in. I am a degreed historian from the university, studies including military history and history of war. I am also an actress, dancer, singer, makeup artist, fashion designer, film critic and movie reviewer. I study the lives of actors and actresses. I have written almost 400 IMDb reviews since 2002.

With hindsight,"flirtation walk" appears as a blueprint for "shipmates forever"(and even ,so to speak for "Blue Hawai" in which Elvis played a discharged soldier mind you).Like the 1935 (shall we say "sequel"?)work,it features the same actors and it's the most distressingly mediocre movie by one of the greatest directors of the era."Flirtation walk " pales into insignificance when compared to "no greater glory" "little man what now?" "three comrades" "mortal storm" "young America" "stranded" "big city" .....and I don't even mention the masterpieces of the silent era !Borzage epitomized greatness ,and perhaps are we too demanding ?There is a good idea,the play a la "Hamlet" or how to get a message of love through.However,Borzage 's touch is nowhere to be seen in this umpteenth version of "I shall become an officer and a gentleman".If you want to see a good patriotic movie by Borzage,do choose " stage door canteen" in which the characters are made of flesh and blood.

This film is not anywhere near "42nd Street" in terms of music and plot, but it has a few good moments. Ruby Keeler is a general's daughter who meets Army private Dick Powell when she makes a two day stop in Honolulu, on her way to Manila with her father. There is a pretty good moment early in the film when she falls madly in love with Private Powell (who she has known for two hours) when he sings "Aloha Oe" at a beach luau the two of them crash. Boy gets girl, boy loses girl, and boy gets girl once more, later in the film when he is the top cadet at West Point and her father is the new Superintendent at the Academy. The best song in this movie, "Mr. and Mrs. is the name," is part of the cadet musical Dick writes and produces.

It's just not worth the hour and a half you have to give up to see this movie. The two leads fall predictably in love within the first 15 minutes and, for reasons unclear, decide to pretend not to love each other until the last 10 minutes.Not excruciatingly bad, but nowhere near good. Just kinda ambles across the screen and bores everyone in its path. I'm pretty sure it's a comedy, but don't hold me to that.