Just Imagine (1930)

Perfect cast and a good story

How sad is this?

Boring

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Just watched this bizarrely quaint sci-fi musical from the early talkie era on YouTube. It takes place in 1980 from a 1930's perspective in a big city where food and drink are in the form of a pill, airplanes instead of cars are used for everyday leisure travel, and marriage is decided by the government. Oh, and characters use single letters and numbers instead of regular names for their identities. One more thing, one of the characters is awaken after 50 years having been struck by lightning at the end of his previous life. I'll stop there and just say this was quite entertainingly creative when the writers depicted what they imagined things could have been like so far in the future. Among the players worth mentioning: Maureen O'Sullivan, just before her star-making role as Jane in the Tarzan series, looking quite luminous in her youth. Marjorie White, a sassy blonde comedienne who steals many of her scenes making it such a tragedy she'd die a few years later in an accident. And El Brendel, a forgotten comic who provides the lion's share of the funny scenes that I highly enjoyed. Why this has never been available on VHS or DVD, I don't know but I'm glad I now saw this on YouTube as uploaded from the Fox Movie Channel as evidenced by the logo of that network that occasionally showed on the lower right hand corner of the screen. So, yeah, Just Imagine is worth a look. P.S. This is the second film in a row-after Whoopee!-I've seen that had a crack at Henry Ford that I read was a comment on his anti-Semitism. I enjoyed them both times.

A man (El Brendel)is (for some reason) frozen alive. He is resurrected in the far flung future of 1980 (!!!) Here everybody drives airplanes (cars don't exist), streetlights hang in the air by themselves, people wear reversible clothes (don't ask) and if you want a baby you just put a coin in a slot and one comes out! Also people no longer have names--they're identified by a combo on letters and numbers. Basically we get to see all those "wonders" with Brendel and hear his groaningly bad "jokes". Oh yeah and it's a musical!I caught this back in 1985 at a revival cinema. At first there was scattered laughter at how 1980 was supposed to look. But eventually the audience sat there in stunned silence. The plot was stupid, the songs pretty terrible (I won't even comment on the dancing) and El Brendel's jokes were so bad you wanted to hurt him. I heard this had an incredible effect on audiences of 1930--but not anymore. I do applaud the movie for actually being the first science fiction musical but it's really a terrible film. You sort of watch it in stunned fascination about how truly bad a film can be. A 1 all the way.

the sad thing is that the odds of seeing JUST iMAGiNE with a respectful or interested audience are pretty much nil. with the theater 80 gone and such movies being relegated to the now-moribund series that the MET used to run, you're left with the filM FORUm - not exactly a ideal venue for anything let alone a movie like JUST ImagiNe that begs to be seen as a camp monstrosity and nothing more. tHE respect or ability to take yourself back to that time is never in over-supply in any audience and the one i saw JUSTi with was quite under-endowed with: respect, intelligence, tolerance, or just a willingness to keep their mouths shut. oddly, the two biggest creeps in the audience had SEEN THE MOVIE BEFORE. IE they knew exactly what they had come for and seem to have come just to laugh. just to make fools of those who had made the movie but i thiNk just made fools of themselves.+sigh+ buT JUST iM is a mixed bag, to say the least, so maybe they had the right idea. come, howl hysterically at the bad props, bad design and esp EL BRENDl, probably correctly described by film forum's program notes as 'CINEMA HISTORY'S MOST IRRITATING COMEDIAN.' i don't know what to say. the scene of the airliner pegasus over future new YORK is among the most glorious ever in an American moviE, THE MARTIAN SCENES ARE AMONG THE WORST. which is the real movie...> - i doubt audiences in l930 knew; let alone creeps with money to waste now. model work for the future megalopolis is astonishing, off-the=scale; and an extremely clear predecessor for CORUSCANT, among other locales. a lot of the rest of the film is dreadful. what to say, what to say...well: the joke about henry FORD is priceless - almost worth the price of admission alone.

If only this movie had been better, how film history could have changed. A fantastical future world and a musical, no less! There could have been decades of movies that showed the future as a better place, rather than one where we are ravaged by technology or government or aliens. But unfortunately, "Just Imagine" is almost unwatchable. It's even hard to enjoy as camp; it's that bad. It's worse than "Plan 9." It's worse than "Horror at Party Beach." It's worse than "They Saved Hitler's Brain." At least they are all funny. "Just Imagine" might be the worst film ever made. My favorite exchange in the movie? When our protagonist, accidentally finding himself in the future world of 1980, expresses dismay at his situation. It's a good start. He's trying to show real emotion here, his loneliness and disorientation in a future world were everyone he knows and loves is gone. So how do the people of the future respond? "Well, if you're unhappy we can always kill you!" Wow, what an exploration of mortality. It chokes me up, the human feeling there.The rest of the movie continues it's hideous spiral down into the depths of awfulness. The only thing saving "Just Imagine" from a spot on the worst movies of all time list is its relative obscurity. Watch it at your own risk.