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

JLRMovieReviews The hot spot in Paris is the Wonder Bar. For entertainment, dancing, good food and what tickles your fancy, this is the place. "Wonder Bar" is a very provocative and titillating little film with a very good and talented cast. Though some may say she's wasted in this film, considering she's been in more melodramatic films where's suffering and loving and decked out in lavish gowns, Kay Francis is the female lead. She has been unfaithful to her husband Henry Kolker with a dance instructor and entertainer, played by Ricardo Cortez. When detectives have confronted her husband about the affair, she doesn't make that day's rendezvous and hightails it to the Wonder Bar where Ricardo will be later. It seems she gave him a necklace she needs back for insurance purposes and to keep the proof of her infidelity from her husband. The Wonder Bar is owned by Al Jolson, who also sings for the guests. He of course delivers with usual pizazz. But the main attraction is Ricardo and his partner Dolores Del Rio, who of course loves him. But Dick Powell loves her, too. Added to the mix are patrons of the restaurant, Guy Kibbee and wife Louise Fazenda and friend Hugh Herbert and wife Ruth Ronnelly, who came for the eats, but did they? Right away, Guy and Hugh are flirting with pretty young things and even a pretty boy is touching and flirting with Louise Fazenda. She in turn says her room number very loudly. Shocking!? A guy asks to cut in on the dance floor, and he proceeds to dance with the man. The Kay/Ricardo/Dolores triangle comes to a head very dramatically with a memorable dance number with a whip. A whip! For a minor little film, this was very entertaining and had just enough bizarre naughtiness to differentiate itself from other pre-code films. The only criticism is the black musical number which goes on too long and does seem to be a bit over-the-top and hard to take. Getting back to the action, the married men Hugh and Guy tells the p.y.t.s they'll see them later after they ditch the wives, and Louise has a rendezvous of her own. What happens next? We'll never know, because this is about the Wonder Bar, where things only get started.

calvinnme ...and a great film come-back vehicle for Al Jolson. This film was released on March 31, 1934, just three months before the production code began to be enforced. As such, it is a buffet of items one would never see on film again in the U.S. until the 1960's - adultery as comedy, gigolos, a pair of men dancing with Jolson making the remark "Boys will be Boys", a dancing act involving a woman being whipped, what amounts to house-sponsored prostitution to keep the Wonder Bar's male patrons amused, a suicide that everyone knows about in advance and nobody bothers to stop, and a murder that goes unpunished and even undetected for that matter. However, this film is much more than just a last hurrah for the pre-code years, and I found it quite enjoyable. It is an intersection of Grand Hotel, the world's greatest entertainer, Al Jolson, and that genius of choreography, Busby Berkeley, with plenty of action and snappy dialogue to keep things going.Of course, it is very ironic that the one part of the film that leaves everyone shocked today is probably one of the few things that the Hays Office had no problem with - that well-known musical number "Going to Heaven on a Mule". It is exactly what you would expect when the over-the-top style of Busby Berkeley's choreography meets the minstrel tradition of Al Jolson's musical style. Every racial stereotype in the book is in this musical number, and it was omitted on the VHS release of this film but was kept in the laser disc Jolson set. That's probably because laser disc was seen as specialty product whereas the VHS release was seen as something for consumption by the masses. The Warner Archives is also seen as a niche market, so the number is included in that DVD-R release. I am glad of that, because the present will never be made better by trying to erase or adjust the past, no matter how uncomfortable it may make people feel.Highly recommended as great classic movie fun, if you can just remember that this film was made in 1934, not last week.

ptb-8 Along with DANTE'S INFERNO and THE MERRY WIDOW also made in 1934, I think this film is the reason the censorship Hays code was rigidly enforced in Hollywood for the next 30 years. Deleriously vulgar and immoral in every scene, all set in a sensational nightclub for all ages and kinky tastes, each leering winking and squabbling, all set to foxtrots and waltzes re-imagined by Busby Berkeley and climaxing with the most hilariously offensive musical number of all time: Going To heaven On A Mule. There's no point explaining it or any other of the screwy dance numbers...including the leather clad S&M themed whipping (and murder) tango by "Inez and Harry"...complete with loud cracks of the whip across the gorgeous face of the awesomely beautiful Delores Del Rio. Someone at Warners must have decided to create a shopping list of production possibilities directly from the planned Hays code of banned themes. It just does not stop being deliberately immoral vulgar and hilariously rude for all of its 88 minutes. I loved all 189 minutes of it because I kept re winding so many bits over and over just to gasp between laughs at the blatant unstoppable cheerfulness of it's violations. All in the most glamorous setting and style imaginable. The orchestral score is excellent - and I have an LP from the 70s with GO INTO YOUR DANCE on the other side. It is created directly from the soundtrack so there is plenty of dialog as well. WONDERBAR is CABARET 1934 for real. Wait 'till you see the epic musical sequence called Don't Say Goodnight where a squadron of negligee clad showgirls dance around massive moving 'pillars' that have big veiny patterns weaving down from the top. That is in between floating past the camera, lit from behind so we can see how sheer their garments are. The scene where two turkey -like old dames ditch their husbands and together pick up the one gigolo (planning a threesome) is a screamer...he clinches the job with the incestuous note "You remind me of my mother" to which they very happily go for him.... and this is all just starters! On top of all this is Al Jolson leering and bellowing, all lustful and creepy... not too much a stretch for Joel Grey in 1972 singing Wilkommen and getting an Oscar! Find WONDERBAR and show it to everyone you know! Colossal and bent as all hell... to music. Read the other comments on this site for the story and viewer outrage. Haha!

clydach Jolson's Al Wonder is a cross between Rufus T. Firefly and an early blueprint for Bogart's Rick in CASABLANCA (he owns a club, he fixes everybody's problems, he's hopelessly in love with a woman (del Rio) who's attached to somebody else, and he's an American living in a foreign city -- Paris, in this case).Ricardo Cortez and Dolores del Rio display mannerisms typical of actors still in transition from the silent era. They both bring some magnetism to the screen, as do Kay Francis and Dick Powell. The comedy thread, featuring Guy Kibbee, Ruth Donnelly, Hugh Herbert and Louise Fazenda as two American couples determined to take advantage of the sexual exoticism of Paris, gets a little thin.It's a well made film, although clearly dated, and with some interesting moral ambiguity. Its limits as art and as entertainment are transcended during two sublime Busby Berkeley sequences: the first a typically dazzling choreographic gem emerging from a Cortez/del Rio dance routine; and the second, equally impressive, but bizarre, following Jolson in blackface going up to Heaven on a mule, during which Jolson seems to want to add Cab Calloway to his character's identikit.It's to Lloyd Bacon's (and the cast's) credit that the contrivances of the plot don't dull the film's impact too much, but it is only when BB's magic unfolds that WONDER BAR becomes exceptionally good.