Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

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?

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

"The Broadway Melody" can be appreciated more for its context than its content. Although it contains some pleasant music, the dialogue is mediocre and the acting is mundane. However, it spans the transition from silent films to talkies--a transition that occurred so quickly that this film, which was MGM's first talkie, still contains remnants of the silent era.Most notable are the title cards which announce the locations though unnecessary. Also, the film companies were scrambling to find talent that could optimize the advent of sound. Charles King plays the male lead, Eddie Kerns, as if he is impersonating Jolson in both song and speech. He is unable to deliver his lackluster lines with conviction, so Eddie comes off as a shallow character. The two sister characters, Queenie (Anita Page) and Hank (Bessie Love), do feel like sisters. Love acquits herself the best, delivering an enthusiastic performance.The film feels like a glimpse behind the scenes of a Broadway revue. And its pre-Code atmosphere helps in that regard. Though some of the action takes place on a stage, there are song performances that advance the plot--a new development--like "You Were Meant For Me". The title song, also by Brown and Freed, is ubiquitous throughout the film, but could have been used to better effect. Here, it's just a throwaway tune that Eddie hopes will be successful.This film was 1929's top grosser and won the Oscar for Best Picture, so they did some things right. But in just a few years, talkies would blossom to fullness, giving viewers musical classics that are still loved today.

There's no denying the creakiness of The Broadway Melody (1929). Best known as the first sound film to win Best Picture, TBM inspired a series of spiritual successors into the early 1940s. So is it any good? Ehh...Many have defended the film from naysayers by telling us it was made early in the sound period and thus we should be kind to its less than well-aged qualities. As someone who delights in film history, of course I agree that some concessions should be taken, but there are much better sound films from this period which better showcased the new technology.There's also the issue of the plot, which is just uncomfortable. We have two sisters fresh off the vaudeville circuit who wish to transition to the big time on Broadway. One is engaged to a show biz man who proceeds to pursue the other sister during said engagement. He is never presented as the creep he is and for some reason, he is given a happy ending with the other sister. It could have been handled much better and by that I mean it could have been written in such a way that the fiancée could have come across as conflicted and not gleefully sleazy.The musical numbers are okay, but the choreography is lacking compared to something like Paul Fejos's Broadway (1930). Overall history geeks like me will be fascinated by the movie as an early sound film, but everyone else will more than likely be bored by the trite melodrama, dull musical numbers, and flat characterizations.

Most backstage musicals really had little plot line, but in the case of this MGM Oscar Winning Best Film, it has plenty of plot to spare, with some of the raciest dialog and controversial characters that indeed makes it understandable why this would have been the movie to see in the months preceding the start of the great depression. It's the story of two sisters (Bessie Love and Anita Page) who make it big as a song and dance team on Broadway (much like the Duncan Sisters who briefly had film careers at MGM) and have major issues as they both become involved with leading man Charles King. Older sister Bessie is pretty but lacks the sex appeal of her younger sister, bombshell Anita, who seems quite self-centered and spoiled. At one point, she has a temper tantrum backstage which has to be seen to be believed with her older sister trying to keep her from walking off in the middle of a performance. The musical numbers, most notably the title song and "The Wedding of the Painted Doll", are creaky to look at, but fascinating, a historical view of what transition movie photographers and sound engineers needed to fix from the transition from silent to sound and where to place the microphone so the camera and actors could move around rather than be static and stuck in one place. This is a fascinating companion piece to "Singin' in the Rain" which years later told the story of the early days of sound and the issues that movie musical filmmakers needed to work on.Charles King and Bessie Love truly shine in their leading roles as the leading man and sensible older sister, while Anita Page is quite impish in her spoiled girl role. Every archetype of Broadway character is presented both dramatically and humorously, with some hysterically funny banter between an obviously gay costume designer and a very butch wardrobe lady. Fine character performances by James Gleason, Eddie Kane (as a producer whose name parallels Broadway's real top producer at the time) and Jed Prouty, as well as appearances by the song-writing team of Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed, who ironically would go onto produce many of MGM's biggest musicals of the 1940's and 50's including "Singin' in the Rain". Obviously, he knew what he was talking about. So overlook the slow moving camera and put yourself in the shoes of 1929 audiences who definitely tapped away as they dreamed of no skies of gray on the great white way.

This show, a good little musical, probably would not win the Academy Award even a year later than it did. The novelty of producing a movie musical—two words not yet put together very often—must have enhanced its limited value.You *know* "Broadway Melody" is a sound picture in the first few minutes. Singing women and several musical bands all practicing in the opening sequence must have been a thrill for the cinematic audiences still infatuated with the "novelty" of sound.I should admit that I don't care for musicals, even movie musicals, but this one isn't bad. It's a cross between two later pictures—"A Chorus Line" and "A League of Their Own". It especially resembles A League of Their Own, with the taller sister doing well while barely trying and the struggling but more enthusiastic shorter sister.