The Roaring Twenties

1939 1920's movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Veterans return from the first world war and try to find a way to use the changing times to make a few bucks.

As with a lot of movies from the 1930s, I find it tough to buy much of what's going on here. This movie's prologue claims that "this film is a memory." While I did appreciate a movie made before our involvement in the second world war having a lot to do with neglected veterans of the first one, not much of this felt all that natural. Bogart was a lot more charismatic here than in that Dark Victory movie, and James Cagney brought an infectious energy to the proceedings, but they never felt like real characters maneuvering through prohibition. Throw in that news reporter narration and yet another terrible child actor--Don Thaddeus Kerr, one would only appear in this one movie--and you've got another typical 1930's movie. Saved by the charisma of the leads and a rambunctious piano player at a speakeasy, this is entertaining enough.