cult film freak: ALICE FAYE AND CARMEN MIRANDA IN 'THE GANG'S ALL HERE'

THE GANG'S ALL HERE Year: 1943 Rating: ***1/2

Anything featuring Carmen Miranda is interesting, and when it comes to this particular wartime propaganda by Busby Berkely titled THE GANG'S ALL HERE, it's lightly entertaining as well...

Meanwhile, for story's sake, a bland and breezy romance encroaches upon the fantastical, borderline psychedelic (way before there was such a thing) first act combining a popular nightclub run by Phil Baker and where Benny Goodman and his band play, as a show's taking place on stage before a dinner theater crowd...

Alice Faye and Carmen Miranda in THE GANG'S ALL HERE

And the camera pans around to other characters spouting random expository between various hallucinatory avenues in what's the biggest, most spectacular, memorable and downright outrageously insane musical number concerning Miranda's Brazilian import Dorita, who begins as the movie's headlining talent/showcase...

But when the rudimentary aspect turns talky and somewhat sappy, Carmen winds the cocky-friend-of-the-vulnerable-leading-lady played by Alice Faye opposite boorishly handsome James Ellison...

Carmen Miranda, Sheila Ryan and Alice Faye in THE GANG'S ALL HERE

With a rich father, he's the partial boyfriend of pretty and equally rich Sheila Ryan in a runaround "misunderstanding" love triangle (he's pretending to be someone else to Faye): all taking place at Ryan's parent's house where... since the nightclub is closed for rehearsals... the big, final show takes place...

Weaving through the song and dance numbers, Faye does drama pretty well — getting prepared for FALLEN ANGEL which would be her last movie — and sings the blues with style and feeling... although her slower songs seemed more beneficial to the screen than an live audience... but let's end with two scene stealers...

Charlotte Greenwood and Charles Saggau in THE GANG'S ALL HERE

First, lanky, middle-aged character-actress Charlotte Greenwood ("you do very well what you do do" she tells Miranda): A rich lady with a cool and sleazy, progressive European past (clashing with her uptight husband, the film's only foil, both parents of Sheila Ryan), legs that kick up higher than John Cleese, and, thankfully, once the surrounding love-triangle softens, the show's on again...

And last but certainly not least, this GANG features uncredited "Specialty Performer" Aloysio de Oliveira, spinning, bounding turning, toppling whilst flying across the stage in an amazing enough matter that the movie could've ended with her and her alone. But what's left is just as weird and spectacular in a musical that doesn't weight itself with that annoying thing called, plot. This is, after all, a wartime lunch break for the boys to keep their mind off war. And if they happened to be a little "stoned" it's that much better.