mark.waltz 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!

chaos-rampant 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.

earlytalkie I was surprised to see this film streaming on Netflix, as I have had a really hard time seeing any of Eddie Cantor's films. There may be some rights issued involved, but I suspect that Eddie's blackface routines, which are included in all of his Goldwyn films, are the reason these are suppressed. All of these Goldwyn films have first-rate production values, melodic songs, and great co-stars Eddie can play off of. Lyda Roberti, who died far too young, is adorable and funny as the female co-star here. I was somewhat surprised to see a very young Robert Young playing a Latin-type here. Every Cantor film has a comic set-piece, and the bullfight scene here had me in convulsions of laughter. I have excellent DVDs of "Whoopee!" and "Kid Millions", and now I can see this. Let's hope that more films from this great funnyman can become viewable for the many fans.

Ron Oliver Forced into Mexico by crooks, a nervous young man impersonates THE KID FROM SPAIN--an imaginary bullfighter -- to keep from getting arrested.Follies star Eddie Cantor prances his way through this naughty pre-Code comedy. Rolling his eyes and clapping his hands, he uses every trick at his disposal to amuse and he succeeds quite nicely. Cantor never slows down, but, like a mischievous little boy, he seems forever looking for new trouble to explore. His climactic scene in the bullfighting arena remains his best remembered movie moment.Robert Young seems an odd choice to portray a Mexican college boy, and his problematic courtship of pretty Ruth Hall is totally lacking in excitement, but fortunately it isn't given an inordinate amount of screen time. Polish comic actress Lyda Roberti makes a good foil for Cantor; her amusing face almost matches his own in stealing scenes and her singing & acting are delightfully offbeat.The dastardly deeds are handled by two of the era's best bad guys--John Miljan as an evil matador and J. Carrol Naish as his grimy sidekick. In addition, Cantor gets to share comedy sequences with three funny fellows--Paul Porcasi as a harried border guard; beefy Noah Beery as Miss Hall's very stern papa & Stanley Fields as a dumb-as-mud killer.Movie mavens will recognize diminutive Edgar ‘Blueboy' Connor as a bull trainer and a young Betty Grable as one of the chorus girls--both uncredited.Busby Berkeley directed the movie's musical production numbers, including the opening scene in a girls' dormitory, which seems to serve no other purpose than to expose a good deal of female flesh. The film's conclusion seems a bit abrupt. The villains have not been punished and the Young/Hall romance is still unresolved, but Cantor seems quite happy so why quibble?