In Caliente

Like the much better *Flying Down to Rio* from several years before, this movie left me wondering what audiences saw in Dolores del Rio. She wasn't particularly attractive, and the bathing suit scenes don't show her to have had a particularly good figure. In one of the big dance numbers, "La Muchacha," she shows that she can dance, but not spectacularly so. She remains a mystery to me.

The best things in this movie, for me, were the two big dance numbers - though the ones in *Flying down to Rio* are much better - and Edward Everett Horton. Pat O'Brien, whom I've enjoyed in other movies, doesn't make for much of a romantic leading man.

In general, it's a problem when you make a dance musical in which one of the leads, O'Brien, can neither dance nor sing, and the other, Del Rio, doesn't shine in either. We spend the movie assuming that we will see Del Rio in a spectacular dance number that will show how mistaken O'Brien's character was in submitting a negative review of her New York appearance without having attended her performance (he was too drunk at the time), but that's not the case. She dances in *La Muchacha*, but not in a striking way.

Yes, the movie is full of negative stereotypes of Mexicans, but then, most of the characters are stereotypes. There just isn't much to this movie, other than the two big Busbey Berkeley-staged dance numbers.