bigverybadtom This was a 1930's stage musical put into film, and is significant mostly for the fact that Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball met for the first time on the set and would later marry and become huge entertainment legends. Also, many stage actors would play their first roles in the movies. Perhaps the stage musical was better, but this movie was a borefest whose performers seem to be going through the motions.The story is about the rebellious daughter of a wealthy businessman who wants to go to her father's alma mater-a small college in New Mexico with financial problems. The father agrees, but secretly hires four young men to enroll with the idea of being her secret bodyguards. The men are football players and join the team. I am making the movie sound more interesting than it was. It had the potential to be entertaining, but it fell completely flat, as if everyone was in a hurry to get everything over with.Notable only for historical interest; not worth watching otherwise. I wondered why they bothered to put it on video.

Hunt2546 The flimsy book doesn't help a bit, and Mr. Abbott's inability to translate the stylizations of Broadway to the more naturalistic world of the film pretty much doom this one to pure anthropological significance. Yes, it's the first Lucy-Desi project, even if they have no scenes together and were reportedly unimpressed with each other during the making. So do not look for that Desilu magic, as it was still 10 years in the future. The movie crams together too many genre conventions for its own good: college football pic, zany mix-up, stiff leading man (Richard Carlson!), lost gal drama, fish outta water, south of zee border and worse, it features the dull Francis Langford as chief songbird of lyrics at the edges of the putrid. The dance numbers look like rehearsals for the invasion of Normandy--masses if unskilled, badly co-ordinated extras in clumsy formation-- and for some reason unbilled chorus boy Van Johnson, who can't dance a lick, is in the front row of every single crowd shot. But there are two saving graces. The first is the very young Ann Miller, also 10 years before her glory days at MGM, as Pepe, a racist caricature to be sure but one that can dance. In dark make-up as per cliché, Miller fricassees up a storm, giving a preview of the gifts she was to bring to the Freed unit.. And she's only the second best dancer in the picture! The best is Hal La Roy, and this is his only starring role in a major picture (he is featured in some Vitaphone WB musical shorts, such as "Jitterbut No. 1" but no other movies.) Lord what a talent, and what a crime he never got to do more. Like Gene Nelson of a subsequent generation, he just never got the break his talent warranted. So watch, enjoy and conjure what might have been when he does his loose-legged, spurred solo atop someone's idea of Mexican fountain which is the central architectural feature of Pottowattamie College" in Last Stand, N.M.: What a number, and how did he get those legs not only to bend like that but to bend like that at warp speed? You'll think Industrial Light and Magic computer-generated the number, that's how fast and astonishing it is. Boy, would I have liked to see him in a major film with someone like Hermes Pan or Stanley Donen calling the shots. Too bad and so sad it never happened.

kenjha With Lucy off to college, her dad hires four college football players as bodyguards, but the four young men are confronted with the temptations of the film title. Fluffy entertainment is most notable for being the set on which Ball and Arnaz met. If it had not been for this film, perhaps we would never have had "I Love Lucy." Interestingly though, Ball's romantically paired with Carlson, not Arnaz, in this film. This marked the film debuts of Arnaz and Bracken (both playing football players!), as well as Van Johnson in an uncredited bit role (Chorus Boy #41!). In a preview of Ricky Ricardo, Arnaz plays some musical instruments.

nycritic Some movies become important, not because of their subject or their cinematic relevance (or irrelevance in some cases), but because of other circumstances.In this case, it's the film that brought together two of television's greatest personalities and business people: Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Both were struggling actors trying to make their images a commodity in the Hollywood of the late Thirties and early Forties. Arnaz, however, was less an actor than a musician so he had material on which to fall back on. Ball, on the other hand, was today's Parker Posey -- you always saw her star in B-movies and rarely, if ever, in "major productions". Back then, though, such a thing was looked down upon and Ball in this vehicle didn't fare better: she remained rooted in the B's.So with Ball and Arnaz coming together in 1940, it is reported that the sparks were loud and clear and despite their personality and racial differences, they were to begin an alliance which would legally last 20 years, but emotionally, a lifetime. Neither of them share scenes together other than the ones in which their characters happen to appear on screen simultaneously, which would have been great in order to capture what they were about to experience (much in the style of Hepburn and Tracy, and Bogart and Bacall), but that's okay. We know the history of Lucy and Desi and if anything, this movie is the catalyst for their union.