oscaralbert Review of Hollywood Wonderland

Hollywood Wonderland (1947)

This tuneful tribute to Hollywood-So-White . . .

[4/10 · 16 March 2016]

. . . is the most artificial, forced, fake exercise in dumbed-down Tomfoolery (and biggest waste of celluloid) since GONE WITH THE WIND, an earlier Tinseltown attack on Common Sense and Good Taste. It's as if someone said, "Let's make a cheaper version of GWTW, minus the plot, the stars, and the Blacks." Obviously, when you subtract those three elements from the six (or is it seven?) hours of the GWTW snooze-fest, all you're left with is about ten minutes of extras in costumes and forgettable music. Warner Bros. chose to pad out HOLLYWO0D WONDERLAND with another five minutes of material, consisting of a pompously self-important narrator's overview, followed by a belabored and over-used framing device of a studio tour led by a singing Usher and Usherette, leading a troop of a half dozen Golden Ticket Holders, including a lady in a bright blue top hat (certainly a typical Hollywood tourist). They're treated to whirling female violinists, crooning cowboys, warbling waitresses, and singing soldiers. Warner Bros. threw this onto one of their "John Wayne Collection" DVD's (TYCOON) to show exactly what they think of John Wayne fans.