Hitting a New High

s to the perilous depths of the African jungle - which, to be fair, does actually look more like a jungle than a few potted plants on a sound stage. Why? Well he and his nice but dim pal “Lucius” (Edward Everett Horton) conclude that Joe Public might be more engaged with their star if they gave her a foundling provenance akin to “Tarzan”. When she hits the big stage, she goes down a storm but will she stick with her old team, or follow the new path offered by the dashing “Andreas” (Eduardo Ciannelli) who does actually know his Saint-Saëns from his Shostakovich. There is no doubt that Miss Pons can hold a tune. Even with the limited audio recording equipment available here she still hits her high notes with a crisp precision that well earns her the “bird” nickname. The rest of this is a bit of a mess, though, with Horton, Oakie and the underused Eric Blore either hamming it up or underplaying their weakly written and over-scripted scripted roles altogether. Luckily, there are quite a few musical interludes to sustain it and it actually illustrates just how far the talkies had come with some competent lip-synching and orchestrations. It isn’t a film that you will need to watch twice, but given the plot is fairly hopeless, it could be a lot worse.