Stephanie (January 2006)

Rating: of 5

Montana Moon, Joan's 2nd talkie, is a slowpokey, implausibly scripted "singing cowboy" picture (the very first in this genre, says TCM) that stumps along with interminable stretches of dull dialogue and unfunny comic-relief filler, and is redeemed from a meager one-star rating only by Joan's appealing presence.

Joan plays "Joan Prescott," a rich rancher's daughter heading back on a train with her dad, sister, and gang of friends to the family ranch in Montana after months in their second home, New York City. Sister Lizzy (Dorothy Sebastian, Joan's co-star in 1928's Our Dancing Daughters and 1930's Our Blushing Brides) begs Joan not to steal her new boyfriend Jeff (Ricardo Cortez, whom the real Joan reportedly "dated" during filming), but Jeff has already secretly been putting the moves on Joan for weeks. Loyal to her sister, Joan leaves the train to avoid Jeff, planning to catch the next one back to New York. While waiting for her train, she wanders around the countryside and comes across Larry (Johnny Mack Brown), a cowboy singing by the fire, who, it turns out, also happens to work on her father's ranch. After a strong come-on by Joan, they fall in love and are immediately married, then head on back to the ranch to tell Dad and the gang the news.

Bizarrely (considering his daughter has disappeared for weeks and turns up with a lowly ranch-hand), Dad immediately approves of the match; but trouble does brew on the couple's first evening home when it's 10pm and Joan's just ready to start partying with her friends while Larry's fixin' to turn in. After promising to be home early, Joan takes off with Larry's reluctant blessing; before you know it, Larry's alarm is going off for work at 6am, just as a sloshed Joan and friends are rolling in...

Joan is charming in Montana, especially when introducing Larry at home, and in her campfire and coming-home-drunk scenes. She's all big eyes and big, dazzling smile, a flirtily and sexily rambunctious young thing, putting on funny accents at the drop of a hat to amuse her friends and family. (Her clothes are also stunning; and in one 3-minute stretch she amazingly manages to have 3 costume changes!) She's also called on to sing two numbers, "The Moon is Low" and "Montana Call," the second of which she pulls off particularly well.

The problem is the entire rest of the film. Johnny Mack Brown as "Larry" is especially terrible, with an accent that sounds far more like that of a field hand from Tara than of a ranch hand from Texas. As written, his character is also dumb as a fence-post; Joan is a fast, witty, citified character, and Brown's Larry doesn't have the sex-appeal to make up for his clunky slow-wittedness, so it's hard to see the attraction between them.

Also clunky is the so-called "comic" interplay of Cliff Edwards and Benny Rubin that turns up all-too-frequently to pad a very slight and poorly written story. The "simple ukulele-playing cowboy" schtick of Edwards and heavily accented borscht-belt schtick of Rubin wear thin very quickly, as does the by-now-ubiquitous gang of "decadent" partying friends who seem to turn up in far too many Joan-pictures up to this point. (And what a Jewish immigrant-quack doctor-turned-cowboy from the Bronx and a crowd of effete city slickers are doing out in Montana are two points the film doesn't bother to address.)

That Montana Moon still managed to make a big profit for MGM is a prime example of Joan's charismatic ability to carry even the most hackneyed, and unnecessary, of films.

One line I liked:

Dad, after Joan starts to introduce new husband Larry:  I know him; he's been working for me for years.

Joan: You don't know the half of it. He's working for me now.