"Are we in a time warp?" condom commercial director Bruno Kirby asks 20 minutes into this film where mine worker Robert Lindsay (best known for his Tony Award Winning role in the British musical "Me and My Girl") goes into a Chaplin impression during a modern day talent show. Kirby's question is apropos because I was thinking the same question. During that first 20 minutes, Lindsay danced in a coal miner's locker room to "The Continental", sung with a bloody nose to "Isn't It Romantic?" and taken on the entire score to "Singin' in the Rain". Lindsay, who scored fame performing "The Lambeth Walk" on the Tony Awards, is certainly more of a musical talent than Steve Martin was in the similarly nostalgic "Pennies From Heaven" (at least set during the time its music was a part of), but his vehicle for film stardom is a puzzlement, albeit a sometimes entertaining one.
While there's no doubting Lindsay's talent, he's about 25 years too late for musical film stardom. His dance number with Anne Bancroft (in a supporting role as a former MGM chorus girl who appeared in the movie version of "Silk Stockings") is filled with pratfalls that seem a bit too forced at times. Being made prior to the resurrection of the Broadway musical, this was doomed to failure, especially with such a weak narrative. It is all well intended but a good idea being pitched through a storyboard with a talented leading man promised doesn't mean success with poor execution. It reaches its nadir with a balletic version of Mama Cass's "Dream a Little Dream of Me" on a gazebo soundstage that resembles the film soundstage in the movie of "Xanadu" where Olivia Newton John and Michael Beck roller-skated to "Suddenly".
While there's no doubting Lindsay's talent, he's about 25 years too late for musical film stardom. His dance number with Anne Bancroft (in a supporting role as a former MGM chorus girl who appeared in the movie version of "Silk Stockings") is filled with pratfalls that seem a bit too forced at times. Being made prior to the resurrection of the Broadway musical, this was doomed to failure, especially with such a weak narrative. It is all well intended but a good idea being pitched through a storyboard with a talented leading man promised doesn't mean success with poor execution. It reaches its nadir with a balletic version of Mama Cass's "Dream a Little Dream of Me" on a gazebo soundstage that resembles the film soundstage in the movie of "Xanadu" where Olivia Newton John and Michael Beck roller-skated to "Suddenly".