jdc121 If you loved the great black & white Berkeley films of the thirties, you are in for a real treat with this movie. Busby Berkeley's musical numbers shot in beautiful Technicolor are a real treat.As you probably know, Berkeley was on loan to Fox for this film, and it seemed to bring out the best in him. The plot was typical Berkeley, including the love triangle, the "putting on a show" subplot, and the nobody becoming a star. The only real difference is, being filmed in 1943, there was also a military subplot.But the plot in a Berkeley film is mostly irrelevant. How can you beat a movie with dancing bananas, neon polka dots, disembodied heads, Benny Goodman's music (and singing), Carmen Miranda's hats, and the delightful Eugene Palette? Twentieth Century Fox has really done up the DVD right. The picture is beautiful, with consistent colors, and nary a scratch or a dust mark to be seen. If you like Berkeley or musicals in general, you really need to see this movie.

brtor222 Several summers ago, I was at a summer trailer camp. They staged an amateur night at the camp and boy was it "campy"! A few DQs had been invited to participate. They staged the TuttiFrutti number from this movie. Complete with plastic fruits in big fluffy hats a la La Divina Miranda! And lip-synching to the soundtrack song. Their piece-de-resistance were 2 big inflatable Chiquita bananas!!! (They also lip-synched the number "Mamae Eu Quero" (sp.?) from "Down Argentine Way" (I think). (Question: Didn't Lucy lip-synch this on an "I Love Lucy" episode???) Anyway, I had never seen this movie (TGAH) at that point, but after their hilarious routine, someone told it was from an old Fox musical, but couldn't remember the film's title!! So one night's bout of insomnia cured that, as I caught TGAH on TV, and there was Miranda and her dancing bananas!!! Fantastic!! The rest of the film is forgettable really. So just get it for the TuttiFrutti!!! It's a classic.The ending of the film is hilariously inane. But that's the Berkeley way. Busby really missed his chance though. For the last dance sequence with the chorines and their fluorescent light-up rings, the big plastic bananas should have made a re-appearance, this time wielded by some big beefy marines in their swimwear. Then the rings and bananas could have all come together for a big Freudian finale with Carmen strutting her stuff as the Earth Mother once again.

JLRMovieReviews Director and choreographer Busby Berkeley is in his element and is at his best with a new star, Miss Carmen Miranda! Carmen Miranda? You don't know her! Well, after this you will. A petite lady with a larger-than-life persona who can dazzle you with her spirit and stage presence. Alice Faye gets top billing and this movie can be found on a Alice Faye DVD collection as well as Carmen's DVD set, but Miss Miranda stops the show cold with some of her best showcases put on screen: the banana song and the trutti-frutti hat. Another highlight is Faye's polka-dot number, which closes the movie, another eye-popping showcase courtesy of Busby.I can't help feeling they could have picked a more charismatic actor for the lead other than James Ellison, and there are few things I could nit-pick about, but this is a musical which does defy believability anyway. He and Alice's romance did seem a bit rushed and forced near the beginning. Costarring Eugene Palette, Charlotte Greenwood and Edward Everett Horton, this is one upbeat film that you shouldn't think about too much and just enjoy. Oh, yeah, what about the plot, who cares?

Terrell-4 The only problem with The Gangs All Here is the plot. It keeps getting in the way of the production numbers. Busby Berkeley manages to shoehorn four major numbers in the just the first 30 minutes, and he doesn't let up much after that. These numbers include everything Busby Berkeley could think of, from Benny Goodman swinging "Minnie's in the Money" to Alice Faye singing "No Love, No Nothing'" to some bizarre extravaganzas featuring lots of thighs, bananas and Carmen Miranda. You'll want to hit the fast forward button at regular intervals to get past the dull parts between them. The story is corny, the romantic misunderstanding is...yawn... and the acting is often weak (James Ellison as the male lead) or prissily unfunny (Edward Everett Horton). Still, the Technicolor is as garish as you could want and the songs by Harry Warren and Leo Robin work well. There's little time to think of anything except the numbers and what Berkeley does with them. Says a commentator in one of the DVD's extras, "He was a dance director who couldn't dance. In a Berkeley production it was the camera that danced." I'm not sure anyone could watch "The Lady with the Tutti Frutti Hat" and not be in awe of how Berkeley not only made use of all those chorines with the giant fruit, but how he kept the action going using his camera in intricately plotted movement. If you watch the Tutti Frutti number a second time, see how many of the chorus dancers you can spot with grim determination, not smiles, on their faces as they lug those giant bananas around and struggle to hit their marks while the camera swoops and turns. The story? Alice Faye is a showgirl. James Ellison is a soldier, the son of a wealthy family soon off to the Pacific. They fall for each other, but he has a sort of girl friend. His parents and the girl's parents think they should get hitched. Will Alice and Jim work things out? They do after approximately 100 minutes. Among the relatives and friends are Carmen Miranda, Eugene Palette, Charlotte Greenwood and Horton, There are a number of reasons to watch this movie, especially if you're interested in Busby Berkeley. It turned out to be his swan song as a major force in the movies. For me, the production numbers are a lot of fun, but the best reason is that classic song by Warren and Robin that Alice Faye introduced... No love, no nothing' / Until my baby comes home. No fun with no one, / As long as baby must roam. I promised him I'd wait for him /Till even Hades froze. I'm lonesome, heaven knows, / But what I said still goes. This became one of America's great songs of longing during WWII. If you want to hear more of them, you can't do better than Jo Stafford and her CD, G.I. Jo - Songs of World War II.