New Movietone Follies of 1930 (1930)

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In the first years of the talkies, every studio drew up plans to release annual "all-star" musical spectacles, but only Fox Pictures truly stuck to the notion. A follow-up to Fox Movietone Follies of 1929, Movietone Follies of 1930 once again offers a maximum of production numbers and the barest… More In the first years of the talkies, every studio drew up plans to release annual "all-star" musical spectacles, but only Fox Pictures truly stuck to the notion. A follow-up to Fox Movietone Follies of 1929, Movietone Follies of 1930 once again offers a maximum of production numbers and the barest minimum of plot. Rich young Conrad Sterling (William Collier Jr.) is in love with struggling actress Mary Mason (Miriam Seeger). To prove his love, he hires Mary and the entire company of the show in which she is appearing to entertain his weekend guests at his lavish mansion (a plot device previously utilized, with variations, in Fox's Sunny Side Up). The lion's share of the footage is devoted to dialect comedian El Brendel, cast as a Swedish butler who poses as a millionaire. Likewise good for laughs are Fox's resident soubrette Marjorie White and comic singer Frank Richardson, doing what they did in every picture they were ever in. Of the mostly forgettable songs, the best is I'd Like to Be a Talking Picture Queen, a blatant imitation of the studio's 1929 hit If I Had a Talking Picture of You. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi