Historically significant in a way: this was Shirley Temple's last movie under her contract with Fox, a studio for whom she had made a lot of money. It's an odd piece - I'm not quite sure they made it: were they genuinely trying to change her image or were they just finishing the contract?
It's not really a Temple vehicle - she shares the lead duties with two others (Jack Oakie and Charlotte Greenwood) and the film is about three of them equally. They are vaudevillians who retire to a stuffy town, which I guess is an okay concept for a fish out of water comedy, only the filmmakers don't have that much fun with it. Temple does a slightly race school dance but it's only slightly racy - the others say a few outrageous things, but the main problem never seems to be them it's the stuff townsfolk. So the town is an unpleasant place to live, and we kind of wish they'd go back to vaudeville. That's what they intend to do too until a deux ex machina storm comes along and makes them heroes so they stay. (They only want to live in a town where people like you if you're heroes... great).
George Montgomery is handsome and confident in an early leading man role as the nice editor of the local paper. There are some decent dance routines and a potentially intriguing theme about the importance of embracing change (which could have had terrific resonance for the showbusiness backgrounds of the three leads) is completely ignored. A potentially big dramatic moment where Shirley finds out she's adopted is just thrown away too. At a time when Temple's career needed careful handling it was like Fox couldn't really be bothered (I get the feeling they always feared the day would come when she grew up and became unpopular, and when they did they gave up in advance).
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