After nine films for Fox Sonja Henie decided to sign up with her old boss Will Goetz (well he was temporarily her boss while Zanuck was in the army) at his new shingle, International Pictures. They made some good movies - this was not one.
It does have colour and a couple of neat skating sequences staggered through the movie. It's also got a sequence where Sonja dances - and she does very well!
But it's not as much fun as her Fox movies. Bizarrely it's completely different in tone. Oh I know that was likely a conscious decision but it's still pretty weird. Instead of being a musical comedy this is a more serious drama with skating interludes - the closest analogy I can think of is something like Orchestra Wives.
Sonja is a skater who has a crush on an ice hockey player who performs at the same arena has her - Michael O'Shea a cocky Oirish type who had a vogue as a leading man around this time. At least he's masculine but the character is a bit of an f-wit... he punches out a referee, has a drinking problem and if I'm not mistaken sleeps with a married lady (Marie McDonald). He loses his hockey career, Henie suggets he join her ice show, but we don't see much of him skating. We see much of Henie pining over him and being a door mat - her characters usually had higher status than this, normally two guys fought over her.
She's given too much dialogue and too much emoting to do. There's unpleasant gags where O'Shea says married men can hit their wives and she laughs along. Too much blame is put on McDonald who later derails his career by.... asking him out to drink and throwing herself at O'Shea. He didn't have to take the drink. Then two years go by where McDonald's husband (some drip called Bill Johnson) doesn't tell Henie that O'Shea didn't go off with Henie. It's just stupid.
Truth be told, this sort of drawn out contrived couple break up was typical of films at the time - I'm thinking of a George Raft musical Follow the Boys. If you like those movies you might enjoy this though Henie struggles with heavy drama and the support cast isn't as good as her Fox films - McDonald is bland, so is Johnson. For Henie completists.
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