Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Antonius Block What a wild hodgepodge of a movie this is. Forget the plot, which is labored as it trundles along trying to get us from one 'wow' moment to the next. The direction, pace, and editing are all quite clumsy, and the film is a bit of a mess. On the other hand, there are many great moments, you get to see Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in their first screen pairing, the beautiful Dolores del Rio, and quite a bit of pre-code naughtiness spicing it all up. It makes for quite a bit of entertainment if you just roll with it.Fred Astaire dances and sings well of course, but he also does a great job as the supporting actor, making faces and comments about the leading man's (Gene Raymond) love interests. He's just brilliant. When he and Rogers dance the Carioca after watching the Brazilians doing it, you can feel the magic. It came after a pretty hilarious exchange too. The moves from the Brazilian dancers were steamy, and as their heads touched, the passion in their eyes was evident, leading to this:Fred: "So that's the Carioca." Ginger: "What's this business with the foreheads?" Fred: "Mental Telepathy." Ginger: "I can tell what they're thinking about from here."Earlier Ginger sings with subtle overtones that "music makes me do the things I never should do." How fantastic is it to see not only the first of Fred and Ginger's ten movies together, but the only one made before the dreaded production code. Another clever risqué line in the film was "What have those girls got below the equator that we haven't?", which is slipped in there instead of "What have those girls below the equator got that we haven't?"Dolores del Rio is a bit upstaged here, despite getting the leading credit, but is fantastic as well. The scene where her and Raymond's 'inner thoughts' step outside their bodies as ghosts and advise them to follow their passionate impulses is cute. Later he puts her over his knee and spanks her for an odd reason, adding to the film's oddities. She is elegant and gorgeous in the outfits she wears in the film, including a bathing suit briefly. The film has some nice stock footage of the streets of Rio de Janeiro and surrounding hills, sometimes from the air. The songs performed, including Alice Gentle, Movita Castaneda and Etta Moten singing 'Carioca', are fantastic. The energy and passion in the dance performances are excellent, but many of the visual effects don't live up to their potential, or to better examples. They're nowhere near the quality of Busby Berkeley productions, so it's not clear to me why his name is mentioned as often as it is in reviews of this film. It is wild and a riot though, particularly when numbers are performed on the tops of planes, including many women in see-through tops. Does it make sense that they're up there, far from where anyone can even see them? Or that one falls from one plane, only to miraculously land on another's wing? Or that they're scantily clad to begin with? Of course not. It fits nothing logically and yet somehow seems to fit this over-the-top film. It's really too bad it wasn't in the hands of a better director, but as it is, there is plenty to keep you entertained.

cinema_student2010 As soon as the artwork for the cover of this movie popped up on my Netflix I knew it was going to be a little, well, strange for my taste. Im not one for musicals, so maybe thats where the bulk of my dislike comes from, just having a hard time getting into it. I found the story to be very uncomplicated and boring at times. Fred Astaire is very enjoyable to watch though.The one thing I can say that is fantastic about this movie is some of the dancing shots. Watching those chorus girls, do absolutely synchronized dance movements on top of airplanes. Im assuming special affects were limited in those days, Im not sure exactly how they did it. But anyway you slice it, still very amazing scenes/shots/filming. Even for today in my opinion. the movie's enjoyable, but nothing amazing in my book.

devonb186 The 1933 film, Flying Down to Rio, was just the beginning of the musical era. The musicals that we know today are very different from the first few. The older musicals had a problem fitting the song and dance into the plot and they went on for long periods of time. The dancing in the movie was amazing for me to see. I participated in many forms of dance throughout my adolescent years. Although tap wasn't my favorite type of dance, it made me really appreciate how talented Fred Astaire and his partner were. The only critic of the dance scenes would be the ending when the women were strapped to the planes. I found it hard to believe that this movie, being very realistic, would throw in this scene. I could never imagine this happening in real life and the spectators on the ground would not have been able to see the girls on top of the wings. There was cool camera work in the scene when the pilot and rich women were stranded on the island. To display their consciences, there was a translucent image talking to themselves and I thought that was very creative.

richard-1787 Yes, this is a great movie. Not, of course, in the same way that Citizen Kane, Les règles du jeu, or La Grande illusion are. The plot is a series of obvious clichés.Rather, it is great because of the daring and inventiveness of the choreography, which at its best has an incredible energy and freedom from convention. The most astonishing number is certainly the one near the end of the movie, where the girls do dance numbers on the wings of airplanes. Today, we are struck by the artifice of the backgrounds, but for a 1933 audience, who would not have reacted in the same way, it must truly have been breathtaking.The most daring of all the numbers, however, is the Carioca. As the various asides from the American characters make clear, this dance was seen as the height of public eroticism. That point is emphasized by the fact that the most erotic sequence in the number is that performed by the Black male and female dancers, who show no inhibitions whatsoever about expressing with their bodies their erotic thoughts. (Before anyone tries to pull some tedious p.c. interpretation of racism on this number, take a look at how the Black dancers are presented. It is a completely positive presentation. Expressing desire through dance is shown here to be GOOD.) When Astaire and Rogers do their variation on it, it is very beautiful to watch and very impressive dancing, but nowhere nearly as obviously erotic. The Brazilian dancers are shown, here, to have a freedom that even the best of American dancers cannot accept. The latter must abstract their desire to such an extent that it no longer appears to be sexual desire to a general audience.The Hayes code would put a quick end to such public eroticism, but while it was possible, this movie, through dance, expresses things that American movies would not be allowed to say again for decades.