Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

Crwthod A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

ksf-2 The title actually says "Adventures in Africa", but it's listed on Turner Classics as "Bright Lights!". and the trivia says there's a lost technicolor version, but personally i'm glad its in glorious black and white... i like my early talkies to be in charming but ancient black and white. a bare minimum of a story. In this show-within-a-show, Frank Fay is Wally, the emcee of the big production. Dorothy Mackaill is Louanne, about to leave the show and marry into money. the other big names are Noah Beery as the interloper, and funny guy Frank McHugh as the reporter, always lurking about. he's listed way down in the credits, but he's in almost every scene. one of his first roles in hollywood. This was before any film code, so there's an abundance of cleavage and walking around in night-gowns. one of the running gags is the Averys, husband and wife who are continually nagging each other. LOTS of song and dance numbers, but it keeps moving along. it's fun... light and fluffy. A Curtiz production... probably his best known films were Casablanca and Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Jimmy L. A Broadway star is giving up the stage to marry a millionaire, but she might be happier with the man who brought her up through the showbiz ranks.BRIGHT LIGHTS (1930) is ultimately a movie about a show business family and how everyone supports each other. The action takes place on the night of Louanne's (Dorothy Mackaill) last performance in a successful musical revue before settling down with a rich society type. Louanne's co-star Wally (Frank Fay) has been with her through the ups and downs, and in fact groomed Louanne to be the star she's become. Wally loves Louanne and wants nothing but the best for her, even if that means letting her marry another man.Director Michael Curtiz uses flashback sequences to contrast Louanne's press-friendly account of her "innocent" past with the more vulgar realities of her life (dancing the hula in African saloons and cheap carnivals). When her past threatens to ruin her impending marriage, Wally steps in to protect her.I'd recently seen Dorothy Mackaill in another talkie and was disappointed with her performance, but she's much better here. Much more "alive", joking around with Fay in an early scene in her dressing room and doing her fair share of singing and dancing in the musical numbers. Frank Fay plays his role like an old pro. He made relatively few movies in his career but I still find ones I haven't seen before.Joining them in the cast is Inez Courtney, who pops up in lots of early-'30s films as the female lead's funny friend. She's awfully cute here as another performer whose boyfriend (THE CROWD's James Murray) makes a business deal with a ghost from Louanne's past. That ghost (and the villain of the piece) is Noah Beery Sr., playing a Portuguese (?!) diamond smuggler from Louanne's African days. Frank McHugh is the inebriated reporter who hangs around backstage and Tom Dugan and frequent Laurel & Hardy co-star Daphne Pollard play a battling married couple in the company.The cast of the show-within-the-show, along with their romantic partners, the stage manager, the security guard, and the usual crowd buzzing around backstage make up a sort of close-knit family, and it's touching to see how they cover for each other when the theater becomes the scene of a murder investigation.There are several musical routines featured within the context of the story. The songs are nothing special and the choreography isn't very elaborate (we're not talking about Busby Berkeley here), but it might've been the bee's knees back in the very early days of film musicals. The opening number is an ode to New York City (including a bizarre Wall Street set piece), and there's a "rah rah" college-themed number and an exotic "cannibal" number.Some of the jokes fall flat, but the cast is engaging and the film balances music, romance, comedy, and suspense all in a comfortable sixty-nine minutes.TCM aired BRIGHT LIGHTS under its rather misleading re-release name ADVENTURES IN_AFRICA.

humbugmsw I watched "Bright Lights" (1930) for the first time on TCM last night and felt that it would've been better if we could see it like it originally was presented. First of all, I wish the film could be reconstructed. It seems disjointed in places because the movie was truncated between the time it was filmed and the time it was released. It's obvious that a few songs are missing. The part played by James Murray seems to have suffered the most. He was wonderful in King Vidor's "The Crowd" (1928). I knew of his tragic early death, but wondered if he truly showed promise, or was a one-time flash-in-the pan. His acting ability in this talkie was pretty good. His potential in sound movies can only be conjectured.The screenplay was strong for the time, with witty lines and novel dramatic situations. There were unexplained holes in the plot, seemingly because of the cuts, not the screenplay. The dialog and gags delivered by Daphne Pollard and Tom Dugan were unexpected. Frank Fay's performance is likely the best he ever did on the screen. His delivery of the song, "Nobody Cares" is excellent. However, Dorothy Mackaill's singing and dancing are weak, to say the least. The film stands out from other films of the time because of director Michael Curtiz and cinematographer Lee Garmes. Some shots are set up creatively. The visual pacing is above average for the time. There obviously was care and preparation used in making this film.Now to the point of Technicolor. I think to film would make a much stronger impression on us if we could see it in the original color. The seemingly harsh make-up would have been more palatable in color. The costumes and musical numbers were obviously designed with color in mind. As we see it now, in mere black-and-white, the numbers pass in a blur of overblown activity. They are unquestionably over-done, probably to take the focus off Dorothy Mackaill's limited singing and dancing, but would be more impressive if we could see them in color.It is unfair to judge "Bright Lights" as it exists today. We can only dream of what it originally was like. Only then it would seem better than we had originally thought!

sws-3 It is a shame that no Technicolor print of this Vitaphone musical has survived, because the aesthetic oddities of the 2-color process would be a match for this preposterous Broadway story. Star Louanne (Mackaill) plans to marry a rich dud, but deep down pal Wally (Fay). Sadly, Wally is a jerk. There is a flashback to an African local (like Disney's Tarzan, sans Africans), and some silly backstage gunplay. Frank McHugh is swell as a drunk reporter. Mackaill is appealing in the production numbers, but as lost as everyone else with the poor script. Guilty fun for fans of early musicals, though.