In Caliente
                     
Director: Lloyd Bacon
Year: 1935
Rating: 4.0
This is Busby Berkeley light. The plot revolves around an alcoholic magazine editor (Pat O'Brien) who gets drunk, passes out and his friend (Edward Everett Horton) manages to get him unconscious from New York to south of the border in a resort that hits every Mexican stereotype there is. He wants him to dry out and get away from the woman he is supposed to marry. Horton who is the only reason to see the film persuades a dancer (Delores del Rio) to make O'Brien fall in love with her.  He thinks she is a high class prostitute. She just wants revenge for a review that O’Brien wrote about her dancing. He is engaged to harridan and gold digger Glenda Farrell. Farrell is usually a treat but here she doesn’t get much time and yells as much as O’Brien does. Lackluster shenanigans follow.



None of it is particularly good - O'Brien barks throughout the film like an angry terrier and del Rio stares and smiles like she is moonstruck. I have to say I have never understood how O'Brien became a big romantic lead back in the 1930's, but he was. In this one, since he is an editor in movie land he talks fast, likes women, drinks too much and is very loud. Nobody in the film is very likable and the love affair is juvenile and hokey. Who could possibly fall in love with an astonishingly annoying O’Brien?  In two days. Del Rio began as a star in silent films in Hollywood with what is considered a classic face and was a fine dancer into the talkies. Later she left Hollywood for the Mexican film industry and became a huge star there as well.



But most people watch a Busby Berkeley choreographed film for the dance numbers and this is where the film primarily disappoints. All the music is not surprisingly Latin tinged but the dance numbers are rather florid with few of Berkeley's trademark touches. Considering that he was on an incredible streak with 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933 & 1935, Footlight Parade and Dames before this, it is almost puzzling how tepid the choreography is. No songs of note and the big finale in the end rhymes muchacha with gottcha and then with cucaracha. Gads.