KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

EssenceStory Well Deserved Praise

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

frankebe The sets are gorgeous and magnificent. The 'special effects' are—VERY effective! The story is hallucinogenic and outrageous. The musical numbers are gratuitous and hilarious. The hairstyles, the clothes, the backdrops all may be nominally futuristic, but it's the future through a 1930's lens—my favorite decade in art and film. Everything is improbable and unbelievable—and it's all delightfully pre-code and 100% politically incorrect. What's there not to like?El Brendel is really quite engaging. He takes several deft falls and acquits himself as a decent visual comedian. He even gets to do a multi-personality skit, which I'm assuming came from his Vaudeville shtick, so there is some historical interest to this.And if you like Marjorie White, this is the movie for you! She has a pretty large roll in this movie. She mugs, she sings, she performs eccentric dancing, she pantomimes. As her usual spunky self, the first time we see Ms. White is on a tele-TV screen: she's in her underwear. Immediately upon appearing in-person, she takes off her clothes. Toward the finale she also gets a nice comic monologue. My only disappointment is that she doesn't manage to stow away on the spaceship to Mars… (As a "guilty pleasure" I will to admit: I love the exotically-dressed Amazonian outer-space women of early "sci-fi" cinema. So the Martian Women are a plus here, not a minus!)Admittedly, there are a few slow-ish shots. But even these work in the film's favor—as Ms. White suddenly grabs the rear-seat of a man walking too slowly through the set, and thrusts him forward with the admonition to "get moving!"Well, folks, "Just Imagine" now joins the ranks of much maligned movies that I actually enjoy enough to watch more than once, and which I will show to my friends—and of which they will heartily approve. This list includes: "Meet the Baron", "Three's A Crowd"; "A Pest from the West"; "Cuckoo on a Choo Choo", "Outer Space Jitters", "Abbott and Costello Go to Mars", and Larry Semon's "Wizard of Oz".All we need is a pristine print; and since one was recently projected at David Packard's "Stanford Theatre", I certainly hope a copy gets printed onto Blu-Ray sometime soon!

tavm Just watched this bizarrely quaint sci-fi musical from the early talkie era on YouTube. It takes place in 1980 from a 1930's perspective in a big city where food and drink are in the form of a pill, airplanes instead of cars are used for everyday leisure travel, and marriage is decided by the government. Oh, and characters use single letters and numbers instead of regular names for their identities. One more thing, one of the characters is awaken after 50 years having been struck by lightning at the end of his previous life. I'll stop there and just say this was quite entertainingly creative when the writers depicted what they imagined things could have been like so far in the future. Among the players worth mentioning: Maureen O'Sullivan, just before her star-making role as Jane in the Tarzan series, looking quite luminous in her youth. Marjorie White, a sassy blonde comedienne who steals many of her scenes making it such a tragedy she'd die a few years later in an accident. And El Brendel, a forgotten comic who provides the lion's share of the funny scenes that I highly enjoyed. Why this has never been available on VHS or DVD, I don't know but I'm glad I now saw this on YouTube as uploaded from the Fox Movie Channel as evidenced by the logo of that network that occasionally showed on the lower right hand corner of the screen. So, yeah, Just Imagine is worth a look. P.S. This is the second film in a row-after Whoopee!-I've seen that had a crack at Henry Ford that I read was a comment on his anti-Semitism. I enjoyed them both times.

preppy-3 A man (El Brendel)is (for some reason) frozen alive. He is resurrected in the far flung future of 1980 (!!!) Here everybody drives airplanes (cars don't exist), streetlights hang in the air by themselves, people wear reversible clothes (don't ask) and if you want a baby you just put a coin in a slot and one comes out! Also people no longer have names--they're identified by a combo on letters and numbers. Basically we get to see all those "wonders" with Brendel and hear his groaningly bad "jokes". Oh yeah and it's a musical!I caught this back in 1985 at a revival cinema. At first there was scattered laughter at how 1980 was supposed to look. But eventually the audience sat there in stunned silence. The plot was stupid, the songs pretty terrible (I won't even comment on the dancing) and El Brendel's jokes were so bad you wanted to hurt him. I heard this had an incredible effect on audiences of 1930--but not anymore. I do applaud the movie for actually being the first science fiction musical but it's really a terrible film. You sort of watch it in stunned fascination about how truly bad a film can be. A 1 all the way.

malexartist the sad thing is that the odds of seeing JUST iMAGiNE with a respectful or interested audience are pretty much nil. with the theater 80 gone and such movies being relegated to the now-moribund series that the MET used to run, you're left with the filM FORUm - not exactly a ideal venue for anything let alone a movie like JUST ImagiNe that begs to be seen as a camp monstrosity and nothing more. tHE respect or ability to take yourself back to that time is never in over-supply in any audience and the one i saw JUSTi with was quite under-endowed with: respect, intelligence, tolerance, or just a willingness to keep their mouths shut. oddly, the two biggest creeps in the audience had SEEN THE MOVIE BEFORE. IE they knew exactly what they had come for and seem to have come just to laugh. just to make fools of those who had made the movie but i thiNk just made fools of themselves.+sigh+ buT JUST iM is a mixed bag, to say the least, so maybe they had the right idea. come, howl hysterically at the bad props, bad design and esp EL BRENDl, probably correctly described by film forum's program notes as 'CINEMA HISTORY'S MOST IRRITATING COMEDIAN.' i don't know what to say. the scene of the airliner pegasus over future new YORK is among the most glorious ever in an American moviE, THE MARTIAN SCENES ARE AMONG THE WORST. which is the real movie...> - i doubt audiences in l930 knew; let alone creeps with money to waste now. model work for the future megalopolis is astonishing, off-the=scale; and an extremely clear predecessor for CORUSCANT, among other locales. a lot of the rest of the film is dreadful. what to say, what to say...well: the joke about henry FORD is priceless - almost worth the price of admission alone.