I'm giving this disappointing movie a "4", because I did enjoy the Technicolor sequence. It looks really great on the Warner DVD too. The only problem with it, of course, is that on original release (theater or DVD), by the time good old Technicolor comes on, most customers would either have taken "The Ice Follies" ("folly" is right!) out of their DVD players and thrown it away, or if they were silly enough to patronize the movie back in 1939 -- despite the warnings by contemporary critics -- have left the theater in disgust.
Actually, if you expect a movie to be bad, it usually turns out to be not quite as bad you expected. I expected this one to be real, real, real bad, but it's only real bad. Joan Crawford often said that the script by Leonard Praskins, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf was a load of rubbish, but I wonder why she allowed director Reinhold Schunzel to think it was great stuff. I would have put him wise and suggested that the only way to play the movie was to send it up.
It amazes me that Jimmy Stewart managed to survive this outing. Fortunately for Lew Ayres, his role is small enough to be insignificant and he was soon to find his real home in a certain very popular "B" series in which he played Doctor James Kildare! (Of course the real star of that series was Lionel Barrymore, but you can't have everything!)
Actually, if you expect a movie to be bad, it usually turns out to be not quite as bad you expected. I expected this one to be real, real, real bad, but it's only real bad. Joan Crawford often said that the script by Leonard Praskins, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf was a load of rubbish, but I wonder why she allowed director Reinhold Schunzel to think it was great stuff. I would have put him wise and suggested that the only way to play the movie was to send it up.
It amazes me that Jimmy Stewart managed to survive this outing. Fortunately for Lew Ayres, his role is small enough to be insignificant and he was soon to find his real home in a certain very popular "B" series in which he played Doctor James Kildare! (Of course the real star of that series was Lionel Barrymore, but you can't have everything!)