Rio Rita (1929)

For a 1929 musical, "Rio Rita" is pretty good. However, early talkie musicals stink--so this isn't a glowing endorsement. Like too many of these films, this one is extremely stagy, the singing is god-awful by today's standards and the film is dated beyond the capacity of most viewers to stick with the movie. So I am saying the film is terrible, right? Well, no. It is well worth seeing if you are very familiar with films of the era or if you are a huge fan of early comedies, as it's the first film featuring Wheeler and Woolsey, a duo who achieved a lot of success in the 1930s but who are practically forgotten today.The film is about some Mexican outlaw named 'The Kinkajou'--an odd name since a kinkajou is a very unassuming looking little creature that kind of cute. The bandit, a federal agent and the Kinkajou's sister all come together in Mexico. However, apart from this main plot are Wheeler & Woolsey who are almost like an entirely different movie within the movie. Wheeler is a guy in love with his usual on- screen love, Dorothy Lee, though this is complicated since he is technically STILL married. Woolsey is his lawyer. When it turns out the wife (who Wheeler THINKS he's legally divorced) has come into a fortune, Woolsey makes a play for her!The characters sing and sing and sing in this film. There is definitely too much singing and it's made worse since so much of it is dated and dull--and almost operatic in style. Combined with the original Ziegfeld song and dance numbers, it's all very hard to take. Plus, the songs are so omnipresent that they really get in the way of the plot--and often derail the comedy. The film also would have greatly benefited from getting rid of the whole Kinkajou plot!Overall, this is an odd little curio that is of interest to nuts like me who want to see Wheeler & Woolsey in their first film. Otherwise, you need to have a lot of patience to bother with this dated old musical.FYI--Some of the film is in color--very nice looking for 1929. It's obvious that RKO was really pulling out the stops in their first film. However, I assume the color prints for some of the reels were lost, so the film goes back and forth between the two.

"Rio Rita" is a filmed stage play with a couple of outdoor scenes tossed in. Taken just as a movie it would be a near-flop, but as a historical document it is an essential part of Hollywood's rich past of musical motion pictures. It is also a rare look at a production overseen by Broadway showman nonpareil Florenz Ziegfeld, which most of us have never seen but can only read about.Presumably, the spectacle's the thing with a Ziegfeld show, because Rio Rita's book is just plain goofy and as entertaining as oatmeal. The story is absurd and wanders about for 103 minutes and is saved only by musical interludes and by the comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey, who are forced to work with some unfunny material but bring much-needed energy to the show. The music is very good, even though my DVD from Warner Archives collection omits the "Kinkajou" song and dance number. I have it on a CD recording and sounds almost like the show's best number - but I can't tell, since it's been left out.Bebe Daniels was excellent but I found John Boles a lumpen and paunchy Texas Ranger, but with a good singing voice. The overall look of the show was somewhat primitive and static, except for the last 20-30 minutes which was shot in Technicolor. I gave the film a rating of 6, which I think is passable (historically speaking) - if you are a serious film fan you should really check it out and make up your own mind. It's what makes horse racing.

When movies began to talk a whole new vista of motion pictures opened up with the musical. Not that musical properties hadn't been done before, most famously Rudolf Friml's Rose Marie was done as a silent film with Joan Crawford in the lead. The Student Prince was also done with Norma Shearer. But singing and dancing was something new and it's no accident that the first talking film, The Jazz Singer was a musical.The guy who made the best musicals back in those days was Florenz Ziegfeld. One of his best was the operetta Rio Rita which ran for 494 performances in 1927-1928. Since the setting was the west, to be exact the Texas-Mexican border, we essentially get the screen's first musical western.Rio Rita was the newly formed RKO Studios big budget film for 1929 and it starred John Boles and Bebe Daniels and Rio Rita was her talking picture debut. She surprised the world with a really nice soprano voice doing those Harry Tierney-Joseph McCarthy songs. Boles was one film's earliest singers and he does the famous Ranger song with gusto in the best Nelson Eddy manner. The other big song from the score was the title song that is sung as a duet with Boles and Daniels. Bebe's best solo number is an item that Tierney and McCarthy wrote specifically for the screen, You're Always In My Arms.Repeating their roles from the stage show are the comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey who also make their screen debut as well. The team itself was a creation of Florenz Ziegfeld and he used them in one of his Ziegfeld Follies editions. They're involved in a subplot about playboy Wheeler getting a Mexican divorce and getting into the clutches of a shyster attorney in Woolsey. I could see that both of them were individual performers because Bert Wheeler gets himself a fine song and dance number in Out On The Loose. He was quite the dancer, something we rarely saw in his comedy films with Robert Woolsey. Still it was as a team that they have come down to us.The main plot involved Texas Ranger captain John Boles going across the border to ferret out and apprehend a bandit called El Kinkajou and finding romance with Bebe Daniels. Like the first version of Rose Marie though his main suspect is her brother and Texas Rangers like Canadian Mounties put duty first.The film is a photographed stage musical essentially, just like the first two Marx Brothers films, The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers. But the opulence of a Ziegfeld Show is preserved and that is the main reason to see Rio Rita. The last half hour is in color and we can thank the Deity that was preserved. So for film historians and those who want a glimpse at the showmanship of Florenz Ziegfeld, don't miss Rio Rita when broadcast.

The Kinkajou dance lead by Dorothy Lee is a gem. Dorothy Lee has a white 10 gal. hat on an 8 gal. head, curtesy of a prop man with a strange sense of humor, and looks a bit like a mushroom but it only makes the dance more fun as she tries to keep it on. I wish this part was shown more often with the film.