oscaralbert Review of Kissing Time

Kissing Time (1933)

This "Broadway Brevity" is Warner Bros.' prophetic tribute . . .

[5/10 · 19 February 2017]

. . . to the "Fighting Sullivans," released nine years BEFORE brothers Frank, Joe, Matt, Al, and George all went down with their ship the USS Juneau in the South Pacific during the Second World War. (This incident, of course, induced the U.S. Military to adopt the SAVING PRIVATE RYAN rule, which stipulates that no more than three members of one family may mingle together at the same time on Naval Vessels, as well as in planes, trains, or automobiles, tanks, and MRAP's, not to mention within Federal Buildings, Pentagons, Capitols, Trump Towers, and other likely targets for Terrorist Attacks.) Since the plot, songs, and characters of KISSING TIME are worse than the average Amateur Hour, it's clear that Warner's warning prognosticators were daring contemporary audiences to preserve the Sullivans (for whom the main characters are named here, as well as an automobile company) by adopting the SAVING PRIVATE RYAN rule while Hitler was still scribbling Anti-Semitic Screeds like some sort of Steve Bannon Precursor in his Bavarian jail cell, or, better yet, speed up the "Manhattan Project" so that "Big Man" and "Little Boy" could be dropped Pre-Emptively on Hitler and Tojo. Perhaps this was expecting too much of KISSING TIME, which, after all, was billed on-screen only as "a stupid little operetta."