The Gang's All Here

A camp classic. If you consider Berkeley a genius, this is the highpoint of his career. It's his first in color, and filtering his kaleidoscope cuties through the garish mixmaster of 1940's Fox Technicolor is like a male hairdresser's acid trip: chorines dissolve into artichokes; Carmen Miranda arrives in an overloaded fruit wagon, more animated than any character at Disney, and cha-chas down a boulevard of strawberries. Alice Faye, in her big-budget musical swan song, swoons some sanity into the proceedings with "No Love, No Nothing" and "Journey to a Star," but she's overwhelmed introducing the "Polka-Dot Polka" ballet, a description of which wouldn't do full jus...