This not entirely bad remake of the 1939 screwball comedy "Midnight" is still pretty second rate but has some cute, funny moments but doesn't completely satisfy. Dorothy Lamour gives her best effort to shine in Claudette Colbert's old shoes, but she doesn't fully succeed even if she's right for the re-written part of the struggling American singer who pretends to be a Spanish countess to enter the society world of Patric Knowles and his snooty socialite wife, Ann Dvorak. The magic of the original is missing as it is pretty apparent that this is a pale imitation of the original. The change in locale helps make it almost seem like a different movie even being six years after the original, with Lamour dealing with jewel thief boyfriend George Riguad who has sent her a diamond to smuggle into Mexico which she promptly puts into the pocket of the wealthy Knowles who uses her to distract his wife from the Mexican matador Arturo de Cordova. But with Dvorak onto her, it will be difficult to keep this scheme going, pretty pointless as far as the plot is concerned because the revelation occurs less than half way through the film.
There are some very funny moments, particularly thanks to Mikhail Rasumny as the cab driver who picks Lamour up at the airport, basically sings all his responses to her, and later takes her around to cabaret auditions, only to discover that she has no money. Between this sequence and the next one, she's apparently found a gig but no explanation of how she found it so fast is given. The funniest scenes outside of Rasumny come when Dvorak and her gossipy pal (Natalie Schaefer) discover that Lamour is a phony and badger her while she's dancing to get her to lie more and more so they can publicly humiliate her. Knowles had earlier described Dvorak and her social circle as a bunch of empty headed nitwits with nothing constructive to do, and every action that Dvorak and this group do proves him right, although they are very funny in exposing their own empty and useless lives.
The musical numbers are all pretty unremarkable, and as a whole, the film is pointless simply because the original is so well crafted. It's another attempt to promote the "Latin look" that Hollywood was doing obsessively throughout the 1940's, and overall it is weak in its ambitions. The film quickly becomes cloying, and as attractive as Lamour is, she's not magical enough on her own to shine as a solo star, missing the pairing of Hope and Crosby as well as her infamous sarong to make her stand out. Dvorak takes her stereotypical bitchy character and makes her almost more interesting than the leading lady, while de Cordova and Riguad really offer nothing in the way of shadowed, layer performances that keep their characters complete stereotypes. Long before the film is even over, the masquerade is exposed, and what's under the mask of this film is an empty headed misfire.
Tingnan pa 
