Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Majorthebys Charming and brutal

Cissy Évelyne It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Winifred The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

JLRMovieReviews Alice Faye is on a vacation to Havana by cruise ship that she saved up for and had eager expectations for a good time, when the ship encountered problems. Everyone else on board signed a waiver saying this wasn't an inconvenience and that they could get on another cruise ship! But Alice Faye had to be back to work in a short time and could not take a vacation any other time, despite all the courteous cooperativeness of John Payne, the agent of the company. He finally offers her the Havana vacation and her expenses to be paid by the company. The catch is she won't sign the waiver (to not sue) until after she had the good time promised. John Payne is ordered to be at her side at all times, despite the fact he is engaged to be married and the wedding will have to be postponed due to Alice's vacation. What movie musical problems! Enter Cesar Romero, who thinks she's rich! John does not like him, but Alice keeps thinking, where's this good time you've been promising me? She's taking it with Cesar. Then, there's Carmen Miranda who likes Cesar, or does she? He was her manager, but he kept borrowing her money for gambling. With Ms. Miranda's colorful musical numbers, this to-do over Alice's good time and complications to boot, this makes for an upbeat and fun film for a weekend in Havana!

bkoganbing Although none of the principal players set foot in Havana, Cuba for the production of Weekend in Havana, Darryl F. Zanuck sent a second unit crew down there to get enough background shots and longshots with doubles of the players to make one feel they were having a Weekend in Havana. Usually the studios just relied on newsreel footage so 20th Century Fox was spending more than most studios would at this time.There are certain plot similarities to Paramount's Waikiki Wedding that starred Bing Crosby and Shirley Ross four years earlier. In fact George Barbier has the same kind of part in both, a business executive who wants to make sure a young woman has the time of her life on vacation be it Hawaii or Cuba.In this case it's Alice Faye, a shopgirl who saved her money for a cruise and in this case the cruise ship ran aground on a reef on the Cuban coast. She just doesn't want to sign a waiver to get the company off the hook for a lawsuit. So John Payne who is about to become Barbier's son-in-law is sent to get that waiver by hook or crook.What he ends up doing is trying to make sure Faye has a good time in Havana under his personal management. He even calls in a broke Cesar Romero in for a bit of romance when Faye doesn't take to him. Payne offers to pay Romero's debts to casino owner Sheldon Leonard and that doesn't sit too well with Carmen Miranda, Romero's girlfriend. And the whole business ain't sitting too well with Cobina Wright who is Payne's fiancé.I'm sure you can figure out where this is going plot wise. In addition to those mentioned look for nice performances from Billy Gilbert as a club owner and Leonid Kinskey as an ever helpful bellhop. Seeing Payne and Faye sing together once again confirms my thesis in that 20th Century Fox hired him to take the musical leads opposite their stars like Faye, Betty Grable, etc. He shows himself once again to be a singing Tyrone Power. Alice and he make lovely music, but of course the hit of the film is Carmen Miranda. As it was in any film she was in.Another Latin American good will film. Interesting how we got our ideas about Latin America from films like these. Nice entertainment, but bad sociopolitics.

JohnHowardReid Despite the super-lovely Alice Faye's top billing, exotic Carmen Miranda manages to steal the show. She not only has the pick of the songs, the liveliest dances and the most colorful costumes, but shares the movie's funniest moments with Cesar Romero. Mind you, Alice is most attractively photographed, does wear some beautiful clothes, and does get to sing the haunting "Tropical Magic", one of Harry Warren's loveliest tunes. (Harry, incidentally, hated the picture. He loved Alice, but was somewhat ambivalent about Carmen Miranda and John Payne with "his limited and rather ordinary singing voice." Harry also complained that Fox treated him badly, forcing him to work night and day for four weeks because Carmen had scheduled the movie between other engagements. "I turned out a lot of music, some of which was dropped from the picture. I fell ill and was hospitalized for three months with pneumonia. When I returned to the studio, I found I'd been taken off salary for the whole time, whereas Mack Gordon had been kept on. Waving my walking stick, I stormed into Zanuck's office but his yes-men wouldn't let me see him. Maybe Zanuck knew nothing about it, but his lieutenants did. They were horrible people." In Fox's defense, it should be pointed out that Mack Gordon did write lyrics for "Romance and Rhumba" during Harry Warren's absence).To my surprise, John Payne's role is more of a character part than that of a romantic lead. It's the lively, personable Cesar Romero who not only shares most of the comedy with both Alice and Carmen, has some delightful run-ins with the heavy (Sheldon Leonard), but supplies romance as well.The comedy is also helped out by George Barbier as the peppery president and Billy Gilbert as a self-important innkeeper. In the scenes with both these expert comics, Payne plays the fall-guy. And he makes an amusing job of it too.Walter Lang has directed with his customary expertise and no-one will feel short-changed by the lavish Miranda dance numbers choreographed by Hermes Pan.

Kalaman Alice Faye, John Payne, Carmen Miranda and Cesar Romero all fair better in this lively and funny musical romp, directed by Walter Lang and enlivened by Fox's shimmering Technicolor, gorgeous costumes, and some nice rollicking musical numbers.Although "Week-End in Havana" is not as totally rapturous and frivolous as "Down Argentine Way" & "That Night in Rio", I was thoroughly entertained. The plot is kind of unremarkable but it offers subtantial showcase for its stars. Faye is the showgirl and tourist named Nan who gets a taste of Havana after her ship wrecks off the coast of Florida. Payne is Jay, the ship company representative who guides Nan in Havana and persuades the gambler Monte Blanca (Romero) to romance her in order to avoid legal battles. The gambler's girlfriend is the feisty Rosita Rivas (Miranda) who gets jealous of her man's coy romancing with the American tourist. Ultimately a romance blooms between Nan and Jay and the rest is history.All of this romantic nonsense is enlivened by the some catchy, entertaining musical numbers and dances, including "Romance and Rhumba", "Tropical Magic", "The Man with the Lollypop", and "Week End in Havana".Worth catching if you love this sort of fluff.