There are movies which were made a long time ago and which seemed today as relevant as they were then;"the wet parade" is not one of them: it oddly blends melodrama with social comment and a touch of film noir thrown in.
The first part is a muddled one,very confuse ,and the characters are not really interesting.Its purpose is to make us understand the heroine's daddy died because of the booze :she becomes hysterical as she screams -when his friends are drinking to her late father's memory- that whiskey and other liquors should be thrown in a cesspool ,no less.
Second part involves a love affair between her and Robert Young,who also lost his father because... (well you get the picture)and a second one between her brother and Myrna loy who keeps a speakeasy during the prohibition.In parallel,Young and his pal Durante - who provides the film with the comic relief it did need - become some kind of Eliott Nesses.Durante is the stand-out of the movie.
The movie ends with a long moral speech about the generation to come:God help 'em and preserve 'em from the devil's liquor.
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