The Kid from Spain (1932)

Best movie of this year hands down!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

1931 and 1932 were lean years for the movie musical, and other than a few Jeanette MacDonald/Maurice Chevalier romantic operettas, some behind the scenes looks at radio and two Eddie Cantor musicals with some fantastic Busby Berkley choreography, the genre was considered box office poison. Berkley would fix that in 1933 by moving over to Warner Brothers and create some of the most magical, memorable movie musicals in movie history, which leaves the Cantor films forgotten by most everybody but his most ardent fans. If you look at "Whoopee!", "Palmy Days" and "The Kid From Spain", you will see the Busby Berkley magic at work and even visualize his Warner Brothers smash hits in your mind. He wasn't working on perfecting his visual style; It already was perfect.Take into consideration "Inside a Dormitory", the Goldwyn Girl chorus number which opens "The Kid From Spain"; Similar themes were later utilized in "42nd Street", "Gold Diggers of 1933" and "Footlight Parade", from the scantily clad chorus girls, the overhead shots and like "By a Waterfall" in "Footlight Parade", the most delightfully audacious swimming pool you've ever seen on film. Even Esther Williams would drool over this! "The Kid From Spain" isn't a great film by any means, but Cantor's charm and the Berkley touch make it memorable. A totally miscast Robert Young is ridiculously given the role of a Latin lover, Cantor's college roommate who invites Eddie to go south with him after they are both expelled for the girl's dormitory occurrence. By mistake, Cantor is involved in a bank robbery which leads to a hysterical scene of him trying to get across the border and his encounter with the frazzled guard (Paul Porcasi). In Mexico, he claims to be the famous matador Don Sebastian II which leads to rivalry with another matador and an encounter with a very determined bull. Meanwhile, Young and his girlfriend (Ruth Hall, another Caucasian cast as a Mexican) try to be together in spite of her father's promise of her to another man while Cantor finds himself involved with blonde Mexican Lyda Roberti (part Russian/part Polish) who is also coveted by a hot-blooded native. The silliness of the miscastings is easily overlooked considering the lavishness of the production.Not utilized in the opening dormitory number, Cantor gets two songs of his own, the best of which is a blackface number where in disguise he entertains a pre-bullfight crowd with the memorable "What a Perfect Combination!". His entrance with two actual black dancers has him being pushed back to sing, and all of a sudden, Goldwyn girls start popping out of all the tables. I tried to spot Betty Grable and Paulette Goddard among the chorus girls in the two big production numbers but didn't have any luck, but considering how young they were at the time (both not yet 18), it would be somewhat difficult to recognize them although Lucille Ball the following year in "Roman Scandals" was very easy to spot. A perfectly entertaining pre-code musical, this survives its now dated concepts simply by being just totally enjoyable, if just a tad overlong. They don't make em' like this anymore!

Eddie Cantor musical where a jittery simpleton is forced to cross the border to Mexico and pretend he is a matador. It's nothing special all told. Some of the jokes are funny, yes, but the whole is thin and I'm sure recycled from previous film and radio work.What is of some interest, is that Busby Berkeley is here with his crafty engineering. Oh, both of his numbers feel tacky and have nothing to do with anything, which is more proof of zero vision behind this. Yet both numbers impress. Both are in that voluptuous mode he would cultivate in coming years: sexual tease, sparkle and shadowplay, the female body as the fulcrum of a continuously shifting erotic landscape. Eddie in blackface among Busby's radiant troupe feels crude and out of place. He would be on to 42nd Street and history the next year.

I like Eddie Cantor movies. This is an early talkie and one of his best. It has two superb dance sequences from Busby Berkeley.I'd have rated it an 8 but for the number done in black-face. Yes, I know that was fairly standard at the time. It grates today, though. The whole thing is fun. It's improbable but that can be the key to the charm of a Cantor movie.Nevertheless, the highlight for me was his leading lady. I'd heard the name Lyda Roberti. Probably I've seen her before, too. But I was knocked out by her delightful comic performance. Here was a pretty woman, svelte and attractive, who was a topnotch comic. She presaged such greats as Joan Davis and Judy Canova.I see she died young. What a loss to Hollywood then and to those of us who treasure vintage movies now! Lyda, you were sublime!

In the 1930s Eddie Cantor made a series of pleasant, sometimes sexy, consistently entertaining, fast paced comedies. This is, in my opinion, one of the better ones. The songs are wonderful, the gags are funny, the 1930's atmosphere is thick, and Eddie himself is so energetic throughout he seems to float.It's a wonderful picture. Very recommended for 1930's film buffs and musical comedy enthusiasts.