Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Bergorks If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

classicsoncall Sorry to say, I'm badly out of synch with the majority of reviewers who have elevated this picture to a 7.6 rating at the time I write this. I realize all the caveats that go with watching something like this, it was MGM's very first musical revue and a daring excursion into a variety format for the era, but I'd sure like to hear of anyone's first hand impression of the show who might have been there. Impossible now of course, but I guess you really had to be there.Probably the best that can be said from my perspective is that the picture offers a first look at some of the up and coming film and stage stars that would make their mark in the years after this movie's release. The show was hosted by the now all but forgotten Conrad Nagle and on stage partner Jack Benny. The acts ranged from the passable to downright dreadful in some cases, as evidenced by the Gypsy trio that appeared near the end of the show. Cliff Edwards, in the persona of Ukelele Ike had an irritating, nails on chalkboard voice that was made only worse when he went into falsetto mode.Not to say that the show was a total disaster, but it just didn't do anything for this viewer. If I had to pick a unique surprise moment, it would have been an unrecognizably young Joan Crawford singing early in the program. Laurel and Hardy's magician routine could have used more punch, while the one sit up and take notice moment occurred during a racy song number by a girl in minimal attire. Since the movie was presented as a musical variety type show, it seemed odd to me that the film makers opted to withhold an audience response to the acts; I might have felt better about some of the presentations if I could hear a crowd offering it's approval.

Ralph Schiller I have the new Warner Archive DVD release of "Hollywood Revue Of 1929" and I could not agree with reviewer Wayne Malin more. Right before the number "Lon Chaney Will Get You If You Don't' Watch Out", Jack Benny maintains that Lon Chaney does not exist. At that moment a man wearing an overcoat, derby hat, and sinister expression comes out onto the stage. Jack looks at the man, snidely chuckles and says "So you're Lon Chaney?" Benny finally reaches out to shake Chaney's right hand only to have the entire arm come off completely! Jack Benny screams with fear as Lon Chaney exits in a great scene.Movie fans look closely. That is Lon Chaney himself doing a silent, enigmatic appearance with Jack Benny right before the number!The rest of the film is a complete delight with nearly every major MGM star on the lot doing an appearance. This includes Norma Shearer, Lionel Barrymore,, Marion Davies, lovely Joan Crawford, John Gilbert still at the peak of his career but not for long, and many others. Buster Keaton nearly steals the entire show with his exotic dance number, and the finale with (nearly) everyone singing "Singin' In The Rain" in Technicolor is a joy to watch. "The Hollywood Revue Of 1929" is a historical gem that was unavailable for many years until Turner Classic Movies and now it's on DVD.

ptb-8 MGM's stupendously batty all star early talkie extravaganza from 1929 is a gloriously overproduced jamboree of jumping about, vaudeville comedy, tap-dancing, Minstrel antics, embarrassing and tedious comedy, and best of all - some two-color technicolor spotlights allowing for some standout moments. It is all so mad, a complete variety show more than a Follies with an endless parade of the 20s big names trying to be themselves and allow us into their glamorous lives for a few minutes. With wonderfully tinny sound, yelling, reprises galore of terrible songs - YOUR MOTHER AND MINE in particular... an underwater goddess grotto, harem aerobics, Buster Keaton being a caterpillar, people waving their arms about, annoying Ukulele Ike trilling and a finale on Noah's Ark...well yes it is The Hollywood Revue. If you love The Dawn Of Sound era and are fascinated with the Art Deco of the Vaudeville 20s then this film is a major treat. The jewel box and pearls sequence is Erte heaven. Many scenes are introduced by Jack Benny who often appears before some of the most beautiful glittering diamanté and velvet stage curtains you could imagine. Like a toy-box of musical madness, THE Hollywood REVUE OF 1929 is hilarious and annoying by turns but well worth the effort to sit through. A companion piece to GLORIFYING THE American GIRL of 1929 and KING OF JAZZ of 1930. My best tip to get friends to watch it is to play it at your next party as musical wallpaper. No sound, just the imagery playing to your own DVD collection....This is the sort of wonderful visual confection that nightclubs should play on a big wall screen. It is completely insane and unstoppable in its desire to pelt the viewer with musical silliness.. especially towards the end with trios of singing (yelling) stars leaping across the stage yowling at the camera in fantastic costumes. Marie Dressler must have nearly killed herself competing for facial contortion rights against younger and more agile stars.

dapolloni This film will not get a good reception from most modern audiences, and certainly much of the film shows its seventy plus years, but this is a delight for some of us who see the '20s as a golden age, and this movie as a small window into it. It is also a humble reminder that in seventy-five years or so, what we consider entertainment will hold little or no interest to mass audiences. If you are familiar at all with who the people are (Jack Benny, Joan Crawford, Cliff Edwards, Buster Keaton, etc.), the film is worth seeing. All of these people were one of a kind, not to be replicated by big name performers of today (great stars in their own right, but sorry, folks, they just don't have the class!). Just to see Joan Crawford as a young and beautiful woman is worth watching the film!Technically, of course, the movie is what it says it is--a revue--intended to show audiences that their favorite silent stars can function in the new medium of sound. That purpose fulfilled (more or less), the film now might seem to have no point. The passage of time and the loss of context have made some of the humor corny (a term, by the way, from that period). The editing is clumsy (we have learned from their mistakes), but the personages themselves, and some of the song and dance, are better than anything we have today, and could not be duplicated. I'd rather watch this than anything on the screen now.