Comments about It's A Great Life (1929) (DVD):

It may not be everyone's cup of tea but I loved it.

Comments about It's A Great Life (1929) (DVD):

If nothing else, this film affords viewers the rare opportunity to see why the Duncan Sisters were one of Vaudeville's greatest acts. Unfortunately, the poor writing and flat characters of the screenplay shut the Duncan Sisters out of Hollywood after one picture. Interesting to collectors is the use of two-strip Technicolor.

Comments about It's A Great Life (1929) (DVD):

A great many of the early talking pictures that survive today are musicals, and most are centered around the world of theater - specifically vaudeville. "It's a Great Life" dodged the revue format to present a blending of showbiz tropes into its simple story of two sisters - one canny and clownish, the other naive and sweet - who find their act crabbed by an ambitious songwriter/pianist. The Duncan Sisters, enormously successful for most of the 1920's in their starring vehicle "Topsy and Eva," display a great deal of verve in their one and only feature-length talking picture, and most of the time they are delightful. While they sometimes seem overly aware of the microphone hanging above their heads, just out of frame, most of the time their affection for each other is very evident. These ladies are troupers the likes of which we'll never see again, their material toned and developed to please as many people as possible over a broad spectrum of economic classes. While not sophisticated, they are honest, earnest, playful, and sentimental without being bombasitic (as Al Jolson seems to be onscreen). "It's a Great Life" is also graced with several catchy tunes by Ballard MacDonald and Grant Clarke, particularly "I'm Following You," a straightforward ballad that gets a lot of play throughout the film. The Warner Archives print is as excellent as can be expected for a film that is eighty years old and was originally filmed in two-color Technicolor (of which only two sequences remain). Of the two color sequences that remain (which are dominated by reds and greens and seem washed out), an extended dream sequence near the end of the film including two songs ("The Hoosier Hop" is a lot of fun) works the best despite its crude visual effects. The image becomes stuttery for a few seconds while the film switches from black and white to color and the film "catches up" to the soundtrack, but this is a minor hiccup necessitated by the matching up of old, surviving elements. Warner Archive has released a small sampling of early talkie musicals from 1929-30, and while every title is worth owning, "It's a Great Life" edges out the competition because of its relative obscurity - but moreso because of its unadorned storytelling, unforced humor, and the showcasing of two lovely performers (The Duncan Sisters)...this film is a valuable, irreplaceable doorway to our past, both in terms of film and of theater.