Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Married Baby 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?

Winifred The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Allissa .Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . sing America's school kids exactly 22 minutes, 21 seconds into VARSITY SHOW, as Warner Bros. anticipates Betsy DeVos' amazing feat in surpassing even Kellyanne Conway for the title of "The Most Deplorable Woman in America" 80 years before the fact. "How do you handle a problem like DeVorhea?" these Warner warning singers might as well paraphrase the Mother Superior from THE SOUND OF MUSIC. Warner Bros. suggests that squatting in mass sit-ins will be the best way. When the kids take over the Fat Cat's "Stuyvesant Theatre" toward the end of VARSITY SHOW, no one can dislodge them. The regular NYPD cops fail. The Riot Squad fails. Even the rifle-toting New York National Guard fails. These scores of men ALL remember their High School Civics Classes (which Betsy DeVour, of course, would eliminate and outlaw) which taught them that their Oath to Uphold America's Constitution AGAINST DOMESTIC ENEMIES such as Pathologically Lying Fake News-Inventing Job-Killing Election-Rigging Depression-Causing Murderous Greedhead Republicans Trumps any of these Red Commie KGB Usurpers' allegedly legal orders. It's okay to Begin the Resistance with Nonviolent Sit-ins, Warner advises us here, but at the FIRST DROP of Blue Collar or Student Blood it's a case of All Hands on Deck to TAKE BACK America by Any Means Necessary!

mark.waltz I'm really surprised that the students of Winfield College don't all of a sudden break into a chorus of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's "Babes in Arms" which was on Broadway the same year this came out. That's what they are, and as the group of students gather together to protest professor Walter Catlett's involvement in their campus varsity show over alumnus and troubled Broadway director Dick Powell, you expect them to start a marching song. There's the irony of Powell recalling a student he remembers being there as a junior when he was a freshman which is the writer's way of indicating that they know there are a few 30-somethings there. Real-life sisters Rosemary and Priscilla Lane who played rivals in "Hollywood Hotel" and then sisters in "Four Daughters" and its two sequels, are among the students who appear to be more ready for the New York nightclub scene than a small town college classroom.Johnnie Davis, the comic singer who introduced "Horray For Hollywood", actually passes for college age, singing "Old King Cole" with energetic aplomb as if he stepped off the stages of the Cotton Club as their only Caucasian performer. Buck and Bubbles give the much-needed energy to their dancing numbers, fast-moving legwork that is quite impressive. Ever-ageless Sterling Holloway provides much humor, his sly wisecracks indicating he's a bit worldly beyond his supposed college aged years. Ted Healy gives a Lionel Stander like cynicism to his performance as Powell's manager. Powell doesn't sing much here, and other than the lavish finale, there aren't any other big production numbers. When the students march into a vacant Broadway theater and start rehearsing against the ranting wishes of theater manager Edward Brophy, the eyes will start to roll. Even in 1937, it doesn't seem at all believable that a Broadway house would be as available to do something like that.Then, there's the BIG, BIG, BIG finale, a lavish spectacle that is far taller than it is wide. The camera keeps scrolling down to the various acts which start with a great bit by Buck and Bubbles before moving to the ensemble of the students. Then, nasal voiced Mabel Todd begins tossing a football to the chorus to open them up to indicate various Ivy League colleges as they create the various logos and sing the campus theme songs. It's all hokey yet undeniably fun. The film lacks in romantic subplot, and at times, seems more like a musical revue than a musical comedy.

mrdonleone the thing about Varsity Show is that it's good enough for not being bad, but bad enough for being good. yes, there are a lot of songs in it and the story is differently than the other Busby Berkeley films, but there isn't one song that really is performed well, the story is a bit stupid and it seems as if Busby Berkeley was out of inspiration. the dance performances are seen in other Berkeley films, but now they are shown to us in a worse version. still, I could quite enjoy the college humor, even more than in Buster Keaton's College and so many other movies about (art) schools (like Fame). it's not that I don't have taste for good movies, and that's exactly why I say Varsity Show is a nice relaxation but nothing more.

bkoganbing I was looking forward to seeing Varsity Show because of the fact that I owned the four Dick Powell Decca recordings that were made from songs in this film. The Tony Thomas book, the Films of Dick Powell also said that it was a 2 hour film. In the abbreviated 80 minute version I saw of it, I'm thinking there was a lot of material that was left out and may in fact now be lost. Two of those songs Powell did not sing on the screen, Have You Got Any Castles Baby and Love Is On The Air Tonight. He did do a very nice version of You've Got Something There with Rosemary Lane and the song Moonlight On The Campus seems to have been edited out all together.Still even in the shortened version Varsity Show is an entertaining bit of nonsense about a Broadway producer played by Powell who's had a run of bad luck, but answers the call of the student body of his alma mater to produce their Varsity Show. It was the kind of light weight material that Powell was desperately trying to get out of doing at Warner Brothers, but Jack Warner wouldn't see him in anything else.Jack did give him a good cast to work with however with a lot of very familiar character actors going through their paces. Standing out are Ted Healy on loan from MGM playing Powell's assistant, Edward Brophy as the theater manager who's about to have a stroke because he can't get an advance for rent from the college kids, and Walter Catlett who is very funny as the faculty adviser for the show who knows as much about putting on a show as Ginger Rogers running the Brooklyn Dodgers to quote another Dick Powell song from another film.Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians are here to supply the music and chorus and Rosemary's sister Priscilla Lane is another student. The dancing talent is tops with Lee Dixon who had co-starred with Powell in Golddiggers of 1937 and the great team of Buck and Bubbles who I still remember from the Ed Sullivan Show as a lad. Richard Whiting and Johnny Mercer wrote the original songs that I liked so much.Varsity Show got an Academy Award nomination for Busby Berkeley in the category of Dance Direction which was discarded in the Forties. Berkeley did one of his patented extravaganzas for a finale using the theme songs from several colleges and it's quite an eyeful and most entertaining.I hope one day we can get a restored version of Varsity Show. I'm betting a lot of good material might be lost as it stands right now. I have a feeling I'd rate Varsity Show higher if we saw the director's cut.