Judy Garland is absolutely lovely and amazing in this film, as she is in most of her other films from the late 1930s all through the 1940s. Judy is beautiful, has a heavenly singing voice, and also knows how to be quirky, funny, and/or passionate in her speaking parts too. Judy's songs " drummer boy" and "our love affair" are wonderful in this film. And the scene with Judy singing "it was just our lovely love affair" at the house certainly was lovely. Same with Judy's cute little quirky reaction to Mickey missing her opening her heart to Mickey, and saying you remind me of the song "Oh what a pal was Mary". And Judy doing "La conga" is great, and she helped open the doors for the Latin style music that was to come during the 1940s with musicians such as Xavier Couget, who was in numerous films with the wonderful Esther Williams. Micky Rooney and the others, such as June Priesser are great in this film too, although Mickey gets a little too hammy in a couple of scenes, like in "Babes in arms" when he gets so hyper excited when the studio director offered him $100. But that was all part of Mickey's comedy style. I liked June when she does her tumbling act to "Ta ra ra boom der lay" during the play sequence "Nell of New Rochelle". Some people had written in reviews how they were able to possibly fit in the time for an entire play production, and we never saw any scenes where they were rehearsing, and they all had so much else going on in the film. These were all questions that were pointless to ask, such as in "Footlight parade", why didn't we see any rehearsing for the swimming routine "By a waterfall", like actual swimming rehearsing? I say, first of all, that the films only show us so many minutes of every day of the film characters, and we just need to use our imaginations for how the rest of the minutes get filled in. Secondly, this film and "Footlight parade" were both Busby Berkely films where one of his specialties is taking the audience to a magical escapist fantasy land where we aren't supposed to question everyday logic. You can also ask why we never saw Judy rehearsing "La Conga"? My opinion is, don't ask. Just enjoy the wonder. And it is wonderful. Judy's song "I've got nobody, and nobody got me" tugs at the heartstrings, sort of like "I'm just an inbetween" in "Love finds Andy Hardy" and "But not for me" in "Girl crazy". You feel for her hurt feelings and know how she just doesn't deserve it, and the sympathy is only intensified by knowing about the real hurt Judy Garland had in her life. She dealt with a lot of unfair pain and gave nothing back but love and wonderful music and films. I never have had such strong sympathy for anyone else before. I still wonder how the filmmakers conducted the special effects during the "fruitchestra", or the fruit paying orchestra. I noticed during the fair, when Mickey misplaced his wallet, and the way the tough, seedy carny and his clown assistant grabbed him and threw him into the way of the balls flying, just for innocently misplacing your wallet? I guess that carny had a pretty seedy background where he just didn't trust anybody, and he was certain Mickey was pulling a fast one. All in all, this film was very enjoyable, and the wonderful Judy made it even better.
Review of Strike Up the Band
