Kattiera Nana I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Donald Seymour This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Josephina Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

GManfred A musical/comedy/drama starring some long-forgotten Broadway and Hollywood stars. Dorothy Mackaill stars as Broadway star hiding her sleazy past from her tycoon fiance. Her partner is stage actor Frank Fay, who is about to lose her to marriage, and Noah Beery plays the heavy who remembers her 'way back when'. There are several musical numbers interspersed but the songs are not memorable - long forgotten, like this picture. There are scenes that are alternately dramatic and comical, as the film can't decide which it is.It was entertaining, particularly if you are a "movie archaeologist" and enjoy seeing stars of long ago, stars who haven't seen the light of day in years. I like Mackaill and had never seen Fay, although my parents talked about him from his stage roles. Frank McHugh as a drunken (as usual) reporter, Eddie Nugent and Daphne Pollard are some of the other names sure to please old movie fans.6/10 - The website no longer prints my star ratings since the changeover.

Jimmy L. A Broadway star is giving up the stage to marry a millionaire, but she might be happier with the man who brought her up through the showbiz ranks.BRIGHT LIGHTS (1930) is ultimately a movie about a show business family and how everyone supports each other. The action takes place on the night of Louanne's (Dorothy Mackaill) last performance in a successful musical revue before settling down with a rich society type. Louanne's co-star Wally (Frank Fay) has been with her through the ups and downs, and in fact groomed Louanne to be the star she's become. Wally loves Louanne and wants nothing but the best for her, even if that means letting her marry another man.Director Michael Curtiz uses flashback sequences to contrast Louanne's press-friendly account of her "innocent" past with the more vulgar realities of her life (dancing the hula in African saloons and cheap carnivals). When her past threatens to ruin her impending marriage, Wally steps in to protect her.I'd recently seen Dorothy Mackaill in another talkie and was disappointed with her performance, but she's much better here. Much more "alive", joking around with Fay in an early scene in her dressing room and doing her fair share of singing and dancing in the musical numbers. Frank Fay plays his role like an old pro. He made relatively few movies in his career but I still find ones I haven't seen before.Joining them in the cast is Inez Courtney, who pops up in lots of early-'30s films as the female lead's funny friend. She's awfully cute here as another performer whose boyfriend (THE CROWD's James Murray) makes a business deal with a ghost from Louanne's past. That ghost (and the villain of the piece) is Noah Beery Sr., playing a Portuguese (?!) diamond smuggler from Louanne's African days. Frank McHugh is the inebriated reporter who hangs around backstage and Tom Dugan and frequent Laurel & Hardy co-star Daphne Pollard play a battling married couple in the company.The cast of the show-within-the-show, along with their romantic partners, the stage manager, the security guard, and the usual crowd buzzing around backstage make up a sort of close-knit family, and it's touching to see how they cover for each other when the theater becomes the scene of a murder investigation.There are several musical routines featured within the context of the story. The songs are nothing special and the choreography isn't very elaborate (we're not talking about Busby Berkeley here), but it might've been the bee's knees back in the very early days of film musicals. The opening number is an ode to New York City (including a bizarre Wall Street set piece), and there's a "rah rah" college-themed number and an exotic "cannibal" number.Some of the jokes fall flat, but the cast is engaging and the film balances music, romance, comedy, and suspense all in a comfortable sixty-nine minutes.TCM aired BRIGHT LIGHTS under its rather misleading re-release name ADVENTURES IN_AFRICA.

mukava991 "Bright Lights" (re-named "Adventures in Africa" for TV broadcasting many years after its release) is a cinematic Mulligan stew consisting of a murder mystery, multiple love stories, several musical numbers, and tedious stretches of low comedy barely held together by a witless and improbable script about a show girl (Dorothy Mackaill) who, with her partner- manager (Frank Fay) shimmies her way from small-time tropical dives and traveling carnivals to the Broadway big-time only to announce that she's giving up the stage to marry into wealth (in the person of Philip Strange as Mr. Emerson Fairchild of Long Island whose accent is British but whose mother's is Midlantic). The Fay character loves and protects Mackaill in a fatherly or businesslike manner but refrains from marrying her; every time he is about to give in to that urge he pulls back because some part of him senses that he is not worthy to be her husband. Mackaill finds his hot/cold behavior frustrating and infuriating. The development of this complex relationship takes a back seat to sometimes heavy-handed subplots enacted by the likes of Eddie Nugent in an ill-defined role (star's press agent?) eagerly trying to manage a gaggle of reporters which includes a barely visible young John Carradine and an all-too-visible Frank McHugh as an obnoxious drunk, who have assembled to cover Mackaill's final performance; James Murray and Inez Courtney as young lovers; Tom Dugan and Daphne Pollard as a violently discordant married dance team; Noah Beery as a lecherous figure from Mackaill's and Fay's sordid African past. Other, later, pre-Code films with similar elements include "I'm No Angel," "Forty-Second Street," "Murder at the Vanities" and Mackaill's outstanding 1932 feature "Safe in Hell."As far as the songs go, "Wall Street" near the beginning, despite a stage-filling chorus and carloads of set pieces and costumes, falls flat, even with expert song-and-dance man Fay at the center. He comes off better in the Harry Akst-Grant Clarke standard "Nobody Cares If I'm Blue." In dramatic scenes, however, his haggard appearance distracts from his emotionally nuanced performance. The makeup applied to his rugged features suggests Count Dracula and clashes with his gently rapid speaking voice and smooth singing style and stage manner. Among the other musical numbers, "Song of the Congo," "I'm Crazy for Cannibal Love" and "I'm Just a Man About Town" are the catchiest, both visually and melodically, though one can't help wondering what Busby Berkeley might have done with the staging. Mackaill is the centerpiece of all three; she performs a hula-type dance in the first two and wears a man's tux and top hat in the first half of the latter before emerging via camera trickery from the huddle of a male chorus wearing a dress. She also has some effective dramatic moments but, due perhaps to sloppy editing, misfires during a poorly staged dressing room temper tantrum. Her vocal range is limited, but she carries her songs confidently, dances gamely and looks magnificent in skimpy, spangled costumes as well as in screen-filling closeups.

sws-3 It is a shame that no Technicolor print of this Vitaphone musical has survived, because the aesthetic oddities of the 2-color process would be a match for this preposterous Broadway story. Star Louanne (Mackaill) plans to marry a rich dud, but deep down pal Wally (Fay). Sadly, Wally is a jerk. There is a flashback to an African local (like Disney's Tarzan, sans Africans), and some silly backstage gunplay. Frank McHugh is swell as a drunk reporter. Mackaill is appealing in the production numbers, but as lost as everyone else with the poor script. Guilty fun for fans of early musicals, though.