GOIN' TO TOWN ***
IDEA: After inheriting the fortune of a cattle baron, saloon performer Cleo Borden sets her sights on the English nobleman who's struck oil on her property.
BLURB: Goin’ to Town is a typical Mae West vehicle: the actress woos and outmaneuvers a menagerie of variably rascally men, delivers her trademark sassy, innuendo-laden quips, and looks sensational while doing all of it. The film also inserts a few choice additions into the equation, including a Western milieu, a superbly shot horse race, and, most deliciously, some bubbly social critique, as the single-minded class climbing of West’s Cleo Borden is attended by the increasingly elaborate skullduggery of the petty aristocrats she finds herself surrounded by. Goin’ to Town makes particularly savvy, self-aware use of West’s public image, turning her inimitable, brassy Brooklyn grit into a cudgel against the pretensions of those who convince her she needs to be more of a “lady.” After all, who’s more of a lady than Mae West? Nobody would mistake Goin’ to Town for biting satire, but Hall’s film is more than up to the task of skewering upper-class pomposity with breezy aplomb; even when Cleo gets in on the action, the joke is always on the craven schemers who can’t bear to see a saloon girl become high society royalty. “We’re intellectual opposites… I’m intellectual, and you’re opposite,” Cleo snaps to a soulless suitor. It’s one of West’s all-time great zingers in one of her customarily delightful jaunts.
No comments:
Post a Comment