Too much of everything

Load of rubbish!!

Excellent, a Must See

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

What a wild hodgepodge of a movie this is. Forget the plot, which is labored as it trundles along trying to get us from one 'wow' moment to the next. The direction, pace, and editing are all quite clumsy, and the film is a bit of a mess. On the other hand, there are many great moments, you get to see Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in their first screen pairing, the beautiful Dolores del Rio, and quite a bit of pre-code naughtiness spicing it all up. It makes for quite a bit of entertainment if you just roll with it.Fred Astaire dances and sings well of course, but he also does a great job as the supporting actor, making faces and comments about the leading man's (Gene Raymond) love interests. He's just brilliant. When he and Rogers dance the Carioca after watching the Brazilians doing it, you can feel the magic. It came after a pretty hilarious exchange too. The moves from the Brazilian dancers were steamy, and as their heads touched, the passion in their eyes was evident, leading to this:Fred: "So that's the Carioca." Ginger: "What's this business with the foreheads?" Fred: "Mental Telepathy." Ginger: "I can tell what they're thinking about from here."Earlier Ginger sings with subtle overtones that "music makes me do the things I never should do." How fantastic is it to see not only the first of Fred and Ginger's ten movies together, but the only one made before the dreaded production code. Another clever risqué line in the film was "What have those girls got below the equator that we haven't?", which is slipped in there instead of "What have those girls below the equator got that we haven't?"Dolores del Rio is a bit upstaged here, despite getting the leading credit, but is fantastic as well. The scene where her and Raymond's 'inner thoughts' step outside their bodies as ghosts and advise them to follow their passionate impulses is cute. Later he puts her over his knee and spanks her for an odd reason, adding to the film's oddities. She is elegant and gorgeous in the outfits she wears in the film, including a bathing suit briefly. The film has some nice stock footage of the streets of Rio de Janeiro and surrounding hills, sometimes from the air. The songs performed, including Alice Gentle, Movita Castaneda and Etta Moten singing 'Carioca', are fantastic. The energy and passion in the dance performances are excellent, but many of the visual effects don't live up to their potential, or to better examples. They're nowhere near the quality of Busby Berkeley productions, so it's not clear to me why his name is mentioned as often as it is in reviews of this film. It is wild and a riot though, particularly when numbers are performed on the tops of planes, including many women in see-through tops. Does it make sense that they're up there, far from where anyone can even see them? Or that one falls from one plane, only to miraculously land on another's wing? Or that they're scantily clad to begin with? Of course not. It fits nothing logically and yet somehow seems to fit this over-the-top film. It's really too bad it wasn't in the hands of a better director, but as it is, there is plenty to keep you entertained.

Flying Down to Rio is a 1933 black and white musical "romance" film (I'm hesitant to call it that) that follows Gene Raymond, who falls in love with Dolores Del Rio. He gets his band fired from a gig, and offers to fly her back to Brazil, but they get stranded on an island, fall in "love," get into a fight, and split up. Gene Raymond soon gets back to Brazil, and meets Dolores Del Rio's fiance. Complications ensue, including her father's new hotel, but they soon get back together.So, Gene Raymond and Dolores Del Rio's romance is unbelievable. He dances with her once, then they get stranded on an island. He purposefully sabotages his plane so he can spend more time with her, instead of getting her back to Brazil. I guess they make out? Then they fight, and he hits her, then once they're back in Brazil....she's in love with him?Okay?I don't understand why Dolores Del Rio didn't just stay with her fiance. He seemed like a caring guy who actually loved her. Gene Raymond saw her, didn't even know her name, and fell for her just for her looks. He didn't even know anything about her.Now Gene Raymond's character is awful and unlikable. He constantly gets his band fired from gigs because all he cares about is sex/women. He feels little sympathy afterwards, and just continues his ways every time. Besides that, I really can't tell you anything else about his character. He likes sex. He's a "bandleader." He abandons Fred Astaire in Miami so he can take Dolores Del Rio with him instead of him.At least Gene Raymond actually HAS a character. Dolores Del Rio is so bland and has no personality. She's only there for Gene Raymond to fall for. No character, at all. She really doesn't do much the whole film, either. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are easily the best characters in the movie, even if they do have little personality. At least they have more than Dolores Del Rio. Ginger Rogers is a wise cracker. Fred Astaire wants to keep Gene Raymond in line so they don't get fired. I wish they had more screen time, because their "romance/friendship" was so much more believable. You know that they traveled together for a long time, and must've built up some chemistry.And as this is a Rogers/Astaire film, the dancing is amazing. The "Carioca" number is easily the best scene in the movie, and of course, they dance beautifully. But sadly, that was their only dance together in the movie, because of course, we had to make time for Gene Raymond and Dolores Del Rio. Ginger Roger's "Music Makes Me" number in the beginning is kind of weak, but it was still catchy and enjoyable. I really don't like her singing voice that much, but the song is still pretty fun."Orchids in the Moonlight" is a sweet, romantic ballad. I liked it when Dolores Del Rio's fiance sang it to her.The end, where the girls were dancing on the planes, was a pretty fun sequence, but in my opinion, it was a bit too short.The humor was somewhat funny. I never had any laugh out loud moments, but I smiled a lot, especially at Ginger's Roger's comments and the scene where Fred Astaire was carried out of the bakery.All in all, this movie wasn't good. Paper thin plot and unlikable/virtually non existent characters were abundant. But the dance numbers were amazing, and some of the humor worked. So if this movie wasn't a musical, I would probably hate it and give it a one star. But at least we had a fun dance number, some okay humor, and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. So, I don't recommend it, but if you're a die hard Astaire/Rogers fan, just watch it (even though they're not even main characters.) But if you're new to them, I recommend watching Top Hat, Swing Time, Follow the Fleet, or Shall We Dance first.

Today, the 1933 Radio Pictures musical "Flying Down to Rio" is perhaps best remembered for two things: It is the film featuring the classic, eye-bugging sequence of chorus girls dancing on the wings of airplanes in flight, and it marked the first, epochal teaming of what was to become cinema's most elegant, enduring and beloved song-and-dance team, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. But a recent rescreening of the film has served to remind me that although F&G play second-banana roles in their initial outing, "Rio" still has lots of other enticements to offer. In it, F&G play accordionist Fred Ayres and lead singer Honey Hale in playboy/bandleader Roger Bond's group, the Yankee Clippers. Roger (played by Gene Raymond) soon falls hard for the charms of a Brazilian lady with the memorable handle Belinha de Rezende, not knowing that she's the fiancée of his pal (Raul Roulien), who's just hired the band to play in Rio. Mexican beauty Dolores del Rio does well in her exotic role of Belinha, and before long, the whole gang is dancing and romancing down in the tropics. "Rio" has been imaginatively directed by Thornton Freeland (I know...who?), and features the most creative transitional scene swipes you've ever witnessed, a very bright and amusing script (my favorite line: "What have these South Americans got below the equator that we haven't?"), incredible sets and excellent special FX. Highlights of this film include Ginger singing the infectiously bouncy "Music Makes Me," Raul singing "Orchids in the Moonlight" to Dolores, Fred's high-speed specialty tap number, and the sight of those chorus girls doing their Rockette-like thing on the wings of those airplanes (some truly special FX here). But it is the epic, 12-minute, central dance number, "The Carioca" (still five minutes shorter than the monumental "Continental" in F&G's follow-up film, "The Gay Divorcée"), featuring Fred and Ginger's first dance together, that really makes this a film for the ages. "The new fast-stepping dancing pair," the trailer proclaimed, but who could have foreseen that this was just the initial salvo in a 10-picture run for the beloved team? "Flying Down to Rio" was a wildly popular escape for Depression-wearied audiences, and serves the exact same fantasy escape function during our modern-day Depression. It may not be the best of the Fred and Gingers, but it sure does start the series off with a bang! Anyone out there know how to say "a hoot and a half" in Portuguese?

Yes, this is a great movie. Not, of course, in the same way that Citizen Kane, Les règles du jeu, or La Grande illusion are. The plot is a series of obvious clichés.Rather, it is great because of the daring and inventiveness of the choreography, which at its best has an incredible energy and freedom from convention. The most astonishing number is certainly the one near the end of the movie, where the girls do dance numbers on the wings of airplanes. Today, we are struck by the artifice of the backgrounds, but for a 1933 audience, who would not have reacted in the same way, it must truly have been breathtaking.The most daring of all the numbers, however, is the Carioca. As the various asides from the American characters make clear, this dance was seen as the height of public eroticism. That point is emphasized by the fact that the most erotic sequence in the number is that performed by the Black male and female dancers, who show no inhibitions whatsoever about expressing with their bodies their erotic thoughts. (Before anyone tries to pull some tedious p.c. interpretation of racism on this number, take a look at how the Black dancers are presented. It is a completely positive presentation. Expressing desire through dance is shown here to be GOOD.) When Astaire and Rogers do their variation on it, it is very beautiful to watch and very impressive dancing, but nowhere nearly as obviously erotic. The Brazilian dancers are shown, here, to have a freedom that even the best of American dancers cannot accept. The latter must abstract their desire to such an extent that it no longer appears to be sexual desire to a general audience.The Hayes code would put a quick end to such public eroticism, but while it was possible, this movie, through dance, expresses things that American movies would not be allowed to say again for decades.