Movie Movie

Donen takes us back to the days 'when the only four-letter word in movie houses was EXIT' - to quote George Burns' explanatory prologue, nervously tacked on to this pastiche double feature of the 1930s in case any thickheads didn't get the joke. It's a useful word to know, too, considering the dire script, the flat performances from George C Scott and entourage, and the pointlessness of the entire exercise. The concluding Busby Berkeley-esque 'Baxter's Beauties of 1933' at least homes in on its genre far more sharply and sympathetically than the opening boxing melodrama 'Dynamite Hands' (in b/w), which loses its focus in a welter of cheap jokes.