vincentlynch-moonoi
No, this is not a GREAT film, but it's better than I expected it to be.Don Ameche is always pleasant to watch, including in this film as a movie director. Dorothy Lamour always seemed a bit worn to me, although a good sidekick in the Road films with Hope and Crosby. But in this film she shines. There is one excellent dance number later in the film, although it appeared to me a double was doing her dancing. The plot is decent. A film director is fired when his leading lady has a breakdown due tot he stress. So, at a carnival, he finds a promising replacement...if he can pass her off as being French. A sort of love/hate relationship develops, which I'm not sure quite works, although the overall picture does as Ameche tries his hand at a Pygmalion effort.This is a very good "B" musical, and frankly there were occasional "A" musicals that were inferior to this. So sit back and enjoy it...at least once.
HarlowMGM
SLIGHTLY FRENCH is a delightful little trifle starring Dorothy Lamour as a cynical carnival performer who is wooed by movie director Don Ameche to star in his new movie and feign being a great French star imported to America for the film. (Interestingly, this very plot was used that same year in IT'S A GREAT FEELING with Doris Day - and Day's Faux French femme's last name was Lamour!!!). Elegantly filmed by cultish director Douglas Sirk, SLIGHTLY FRENCH is not a classic but it's a very appealing little comedy/musical/drama with two excellent stars. Cannot believe one reviewer on IMDb wrote Lamour "never became a movie star" away from Hope and Crosby, she was only one of the biggest stars 1936-1949 in pictures and in 1941 was VARIETY magazine's top female box-office attraction. She starred in many excellent films sans Bob or Bing, THE HURRICANE, THE FLEET'S IN, JOHNNY APOLLO, SPAWN OF THE NORTH, etc. You'll note she gets billing over Ameche in this film. Alas, few of the big movie stars of the era have had their careers locked away in the vaults as Dorothy has - most of her films were at Paramount, and Universal (which now owns the 1930-1948 Paramount films) has done a very poor job getting most of them in circulation so most do only know her today from the Road movies. She was a great singer, a delightful screen star, and a fairly good actress too. Here's hoping this Columbia release will show up on Turner Classic Movies soon so more can see this lovely glamour girl in this underrated gem.
A2ZJerry
"Slightly French" is a rather a leaden trifle, which today is chiefly of interest to students of Douglas Sirk's films or Dorothy Lamour or Don Ameche fans. I thought the implausible plot would have worked better in the late 1920s or early '30s, and found at IMDb that it was a remake of "Let's Fall in Love," a 1933 vehicle for Ann Sothern. By 1949, passing off a New York Irish carnival dancer as the Parisian cousin of a vocal coach, and tying her starring in a movie to bringing back a fired director, was too great a suspension of nearly anyone's disbelief. (And note that Lamour was 35 in 1949 while Sothern was 25 when she made "Let's Fall in Love." Lamour was far from old but the plot would have been more convincing if she were younger.) The breezy style needed to carry it off was just a memory, at least on the Universal studio lot.Nevertheless, everyone involved in the production was enough of a professional to keep a not-too-demanding viewer entertained with the plot twists, snappy dialogue and musical numbers. Lamour gets to sing -- in French-accented English -- a short version of Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler's "Let's Fall in Love," the only song in the picture that sticks in the memory, to excuse her calling a playwright at a press party a "plagiarist." She dances a little, too, though in the big dance number set in the streets of Paris the soloist looks younger and thinner. Ameche is a stereotypical egomaniacal director, single and living with his sister in an oceanfront Hollywood-moderne mansion. The explanation for his bachelorhood is excessive self-love, but his best friend producer is similarly single. Inquiring minds inevitably will speculate on the coincidence, though both end up symmetrically in love by the picture's end.Meant for the bottom half of a double-bill, "Slightly French" never quite gets out of its B-picture category, but for a low-budget black-and-white musical it isn't half bad.
kenandraf
Bad movie made only for the lead star's fans.This is the first movie of Lamour where I get a good look at what kind of acting ability Lamour has.One will see it is quite limited but she is really a great salesman.She just hypnotises us with charm and beauty.One can also see she was a born entertainer indeed.If one likes her syle,this movie will truly delight her fans.just to see Lamour have fun with this formula romance/musical/comedy once more!I for one love this stuff.I rate Lamour as the third top sexy star of the 1940's behind Marilyn Monroe (mostly a model at that time) and Hedy Lamarr.....
AD
