45min | Comedy, Music, Romance | 28 November 1941 | Color
Director: LeRoy Prinz
Stars: Ann Ayars, Jorge Negrete, Armida.
LeRoy Prinz ... choreographer
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034730/
Watched on AmazonPrime; faded color; also on a megapack.
Barely qualifies as feature film at 45 min. The 2nd and final film director credit for Prinz. One familiar face (city-boy radio star), but only as an occasional character actor.
Another comedy of deliberate deception. Cholita brings home a fiance from Mexico City, a dandy. Her uncle and his buddies realize he is frightened by farm animals, so they decide her local fiance and his boys will pretend to be bandits. (How did the whole town get clued in? Why would it be shameful to the radio star to be fearful of bandits whom the town had not eradicated?) She realizes their plan, does something to retaliate, and yet ends up staying at home, having passed the dandy off to her friend who returns to MC with him. I don't really get it, and really don't care.
The dancing, of which there's a lot, is photographed badly (camera distance & angles). I don't know if Roach had older, bulkier equipment, but this is a color film worth ignoring.
The set is a small-town square, more like Catfish Row (Porgy & Bess) than a pretty Fox version would be. And it's PACKED full of people, mostly dancers. But it's folk-dancing, social dancing. When you hear flamenco-tapping, you don't see it.
Just a blur of red, green and yellow.
Hal Roach Studios, distr. UA, dir. Prinz; 5+
