The Broadway Melody Reviews
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.
Cinema Sight
Mediocre performances and poorly-constructed musical numbers are the low points in this modestly interesting all-talking, all-singing production.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
DVDJournal.com
...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.
eFilmCritic.com
Its function as genre blueprint makes for quite the curiosity. More importantly, it also stands up quite well as a solid evening's entertainment.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)
Interesting only as an early sound curio.
| Original Score: 3/5
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.
TIME Magazine
Top CriticA tedious musical comedy embedded in a routine story like a fly in celluloid.
Ozus' World Movie Reviews
The first musical and sound film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture creaks from old age.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
TV Guide's Movie Guide
First musical to win Academy Award reeks of mothballs, but is undeniably the basis of perhaps a hundred others.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
EmanuelLevy.Com
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
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
Goatdog's Movies
It is abundantly clear that they had not yet figured out how to stage or shoot musical numbers for the screen.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Filmcritic.com
mainly a curiosity for film buffs who want to see how musicals erupted in the early days of the talkie
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Not Coming to a Theater Near You
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.
Matt's Movie Reviews
It's dated, sexist (get a load of the ending!!!), and technically quite inept.
| Original Score: 2/5
Flick Filosopher
The 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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 6/10
The Broadway Melody has not stood the test of time in ways that many of its more artistic contemporaries have.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
