A tedious musical comedy embedded in a routine story like a fly in celluloid.
Comment
02/17/09
The Broadway Melody (1928)
40
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted:15
Fresh:6
Rotten:9
Average Rating:5.5/10
Consensus: The Broadway Melody is interesting as an example of an early Hollywood musical, but otherwise, it's essentially bereft of appeal for modern audiences.
Runtime: 1 hr 51 mins
Genre: Musical & Performing Arts
Synopsis: Two sisters come to the big city to try their luck on Broadway. The elder sibling has a fiance waiting for her there, but when he sees the younger one, whom he remembers only as a little girl, he... [More]
Starring: Bessie Love, Anita Page, Charles King, Jed Prouty
Director: Harry Beaumont
Get This Movie
Reviews for The Broadway Melody
1 - 15 (sorted by date)
Top CriticThe first musical and sound film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture creaks from old age.
03/11/08
Excellent bits of sound workmanship are that of camera and mike following Page and the heavy along the dance floor to pick up their conversation as they glide.
03/01/07
Top CriticFirst musical to win Academy Award reeks of mothballs, but is undeniably the basis of perhaps a hundred others.
12/12/06
Top CriticMediocre performances and poorly-constructed musical numbers are the low points in this modestly interesting all-talking, all-singing production.
10/05/06
...cinematic evolution long ago froze The Broadway Melody in Precambrian amber. But while the movie is hopelessly dated now, it was the bee's knees in its day.
04/07/06
The first musical to win the Oscar, Broadway Melody is a weak song-and-dance picture, but at the time the movie was so popular that it launched a whole series
06/26/05
It is abundantly clear that they had not yet figured out how to stage or shoot musical numbers for the screen.
06/14/05
Its function as genre blueprint makes for quite the curiosity. More importantly, it also stands up quite well as a solid evening’s entertainment.
02/27/05
mainly a curiosity for film buffs who want to see how musicals erupted in the early days of the talkie
02/19/05
The Broadway Melody won the Academy Award for the best picture of 1929, but I am at a total loss to explain how or why.
02/07/05
Interesting only as an early sound curio.
02/12/04
It’s dated, sexist (get a load of the ending!!!), and technically quite inept.
07/02/03
The staging is wooden, the story insipid, and the dialogue sequences mostly painful, but the film's integration of song, dance, and story was a clear narrative advance over the music pictures being released by Warner Brothers and Fox.
01/01/00
Top CriticThe Broadway Melody's snarky, wiseacre humor and effervescent charm save it from being completely dated, though the dance production numbers -- pure padding, all -- may try your patience.
01/01/00
1 - 15 (sorted by date)
RT On Current TV
What’s Hot On RT
Fresh Links
Featured
Best of Disaster Porn 
Moviefone looks back at 7 films that have paved the way for movies like 2012.
Actors with Famous Parents
BuzzSugar rattles off their 10 favorite current actors with celebrity pedigree.
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T
The AV Club looks back at a dance sequence from the only movie written by... Dr. Seuss?
Top Cameron Crowe Moments
TIME reminisces on the 10 most iconic moments from the films of Cameron Crowe.
IGN RSS Feeds