Just perfect...

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Blistering performances.

While there have been many strange musicals in film history ("The Great Gabbo", "Madam Satan"), this ranks as the strangest. The story is a predecessor to Woody Allen's "Sleeper" (without Allen's wit) where a man (El Brendel) is frozen in 1930 and wakes up in 1980. Just wait until you see what Manhattan was supposed to look like in 1980. This curio is surprisingly dull for all of the science fiction elements of the plot, which also includes a trip to a chorus girl inhabited Mars. The presence of the overly annoying El Brendel with his grating Swedish accent grinding your ears will be enough to make you want to overdose on aspirin. The songs include something between romantic heroine Maureen O'Sullivan and hero Charels Farrell called "Never Swat a Fly". Then, there is the Marsian chorus girl number where they dance all over a giant idol that is equally as outlandish as the growing giant bananas of 1929's "Sunnty Side Up" as one of the oddest numbers in movie musical history.

"Just Imagine" appears on Fox Movie Channel. Hopefully there is a better print than the one on Fox. "Just Imagine" is full of those paradoxes that happen when we "imagine" the future. The song "Never Swat A Fly", later recorded by the Jim Kweskin Jug Band is included. The choreography sucks, the camera work is definitely 1930's, which is to say, many scenes are shot as if we were in an audience, that is, the camera is "fixed" or stationery. If you're a fan of early sound comedies with (now) obscure performers, this is a pretty good example. I only got into this because of the presence of "El Brendel" (who I had never heard of), and the fact that there are many references to a street in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. I watch "Just Imagine" when it comes up, but the Fox print isn't worth taping or securing on a DVD. It's the paradox of "imagining" 1980 from 1930's viewpoint that makes "Just Imagine" enjoyable. Imagine if alcohol prohibition were still around, for example....

Only the truly stupendous art direction of this film saved it from a rating of "1." David Butler directed what was probably supposed to be a star vehicle for El (short for Elmer) Brendel, a long time vaudevillian, but which was more of a testament to the art deco style and the endless quest to imagine a long-distant future. Made in 1930, looking briefly back to 1880, the film pictures a 1980 in which cars have been replaced by personal planes, food and alcohol have been reduced to pill form, babies are purchased from a machine, and the marriage tribunal acts as matchmaker. The clothes are mostly skimpy or see-through for the women and odd lapel-less suits with side buttons for the men (actually not so inappropriate for 1980--they looked like something out of a Human League video).People no longer have names, but rather are identified with a combination of letters and numbers which sounds suspiciously like names (J, RT, LN, D, etc.) In two of the exceptions to this trend, the villain is MT (empty?) and the heroine's father is AK. (Given the poke at Henry Ford's anti-semitism, practically the only funny moment in the film, I couldn't help wonder if AK represented the common abbreviation for the Yiddish expression "alte kake," or "old fart.") The plot, if one can call it that, revolves around the star-crossed love of J and LN, facilitated by Brendel and capped by a phenomenal trip to Mars (take that, Mr. Bush). There we learn that as early as 1930, the tradition of women in space wearing skimpy clothing already was in place.There's no real plot, and not a lot of humor, and the songs aren't even that good. (Better DeSylva, Henderson, and Brown numbers can be heard in their biopic, "The Best Things in Life are Free.") There really isn't anything to watch this for other than the spectacular production design.

I finally got to see the film that haunted me since childhood. For years I saw stills from what I was told was a lost film and was amazed at the huge scale of the sets that rivaled what Fritz Lang had done with Metropolis. They were amazing and awe inspiring.I wish I could say the same about the whole movie.Made in the early days of sound this movie is terribly dated. The music seems to be only used during the musical numbers and the jokes seem to be a step above okay vaudeville. Its not bad, its just not good, or good consistently.The plot has a world where everyone is a number some fifty years in the future (ie. 1980). In connected plot lines a man from 1930 is brought back to life and his antics form a ind of comic relief. Meanwhile a young man, unable to win the hand of his lady love ends up going to Mars. Its all a bit madcap and silly.The amazing thing is how much of this has been stolen from over the years with films like Queen of Outer Space and Sleeper seeming to have pulled off bits of plot for their own.Is it worth seeing? Yes. The sets are amazing, even today. The problem is that the rest is hit or miss and the film now is little more than a curio and entry in film history.