Popular reviews

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  Review by Justin Peterson ★★★½ 1

  Yankee Doodle Dandy or the unexpected perks of exploiting patriotism for a life of financial prosperity and fame. (I am not really that cynical, but that sure did sound like a good lead in my mind.)

  "I wouldn't worry about this country, if I were you. We got this thing licked. Where else in the world can a plain guy like me come in and talk things over with the head man? ... That's about as good a definition of America that I ever heard."

  I would have never even heard of Yankee Doodle Dandy if it did not somehow end up on the 'AFI's Top 100 Films' list ... so here we are. This musical is about the lifelong…

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  Review by {Todd} ★★½ 1

  "Ham or bacon? .... Good, ham makes me self-conscious" - Cohan,

  - AFI 100 Rewatch/Rerank: boxd.it/1Rgry

  Blackface, spanking, Democrats and Republicans getting along.... this film is fucking sick.

  Yankee Doodle Dandy is the biopic for a man Ive never heard of and damn is that weird. This guy George Cohan becomes famous and learns to not be an asshole ... OH and there is tons of music and dancing, none of it hip hop. The movie can be fun in an old timey, learning about Vaudville sense but I did not enjoy it much and I'm a bit surprised it's in the AFI 100.

  Doodle Dandy is interesting to watch because of the intense messaging. This WWII era film is…

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  Review by Paul Elliott ★★★★★ 1

  It is always exciting to review a classic movie and Yankee Doodle Dandy is certainly no exception. Starring the Hollywood legend James Cagney, this biopic on the life of song-and-dance man George M. Cohan entertains as much as it educates. A stylishly staged and impeccably performed homage to the jingoistic charms of old-fashioned America, Cagney delivers an inspired performance as he brashly sings and dances his way through the movie. The story revolves around Cohan's remarkable rags-to-riches career and his struggles with personal demons. The excellent supporting cast provides a fantastically evocative backdrop for Cohan's travails, and the script and direction do a brilliant job at conveying his troubled life story with humour, honesty and poignancy.

  Throughout its two-hour running time,…

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  Review by Rida ★★★ 15

  Well, color me surprised. I actually enjoyed Yankee Doodle Dandy quite a bit. That's all due to James Cagney, though, because I'll admit that I hit the fast-forward button during several of the musical sequences and found the pacing unforgivably sloppy. I always slowed down again during Cagney's song-and-dance bits, though, because it's obvious that he isn't an exceptional dancer or singer, and yet he's so enjoyable to watch.

  Cagney was a wiry little man with a screen presence so intense that he's immediately recognizable as a star even though he looks extraordinarily, well, ordinary. Whatever it is that makes a movie star different from everybody else - charisma, magnetism, an endearing brand of cockiness - he had it in…

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  Review by ♠ Benja ♠ ★★½

  "AFI 100 Years 100 Movies" completion - #47/100

  A musical biopic about George M. Cohan, a musical composer, playwright, actor, dancer, and singer. Played by James Cagney in an oscar-winning performance, we follow the main man on a rather stale and sluggish journey of tap dancing, singing, blackface, and exuberant patriotism.

  In times when the pearl harbor bombing hadn't happened yet, and the States were still trying to stay out of the world war, a patriotic picture was a gamble with the best of success rates, so other than popularity at the time and the portrayal of a renowned entertainment artist, its entry at the AFI's 100 years 100 movies list seems a bit undeserving.

  Cagney's musical chops and overall performance were surprisingly good and definitely the major takeaway. When I face musicals, I turn grinch in a heartbeat, so others will undoubtedly get more out of this.

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  Review by Bre ★★★★½

  The first ever classic film I deliberately chose to watch was Footlight Parade. About a year later, I watched The Public Enemy. It would be another year at least before I actually got into classic film, so for quite a while, James Cagney was the paragon of old movies to me. I felt he so boldly represented this whole world about which I knew nothing. Cagney in Footlight Parade & The Public Enemy became so special to me and I will always remember him first and foremost as a song and dance man. In that way, this film was so special because it showcases that side of Cagney like nothing else he ever did. It was hard not to get emotional watching his absolutely…

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  Review by Ben Rendich ★★½ 4

  Did George M. Cohan go through life without any personal conflict?

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  Review by Joe ★★★★★

  The greatest imaginable tribute to good old fashioned American vulgarity.

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  Review by Cineanalyst ★★½ 4

  Performative Patriotism

  Full of fanatical, fetishistic flag-waving fluff for the most part, "Yankee Doodle Dandy," in addition to featuring an energetic song-and-dance, well-earned-Oscar-winning performance from James Cagney, is somewhat interesting for alluding to its own nationalistic fabrication in a few ways--well, in honor of that day in July, let's just call it four ways. Never mind that much of it was assuredly inadvertent.

  First, there's the play-within-the-play that bookends all the others and where Cagney's George M. Cohan is playing on stage then-President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt. At the end, Cagney's Cohan's FDR is prancing around on stage while telling reporters that what he tells them is strictly off the record. Of course, in the real world,…

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  Review by 🐱Andrew Chrzanowski🐱 ★★★ 3

  ☆"I guess the first thing I had my fist on was the American flag."☆

  "[P]ure, unadulterated propaganda," says Albie. "[O]ne of the most factually inaccurate biopics of all time," Zita insists. "It's like having an American flagpole shoved up your ass," Andrew fantasizes. One of the least essential and least liked of all the pictures on the AFI 100 list by anyone probably under the age of 75, the musical biopic Yankee Doodle Dandy indeed is still an extravagant romp, a star-spangled flag-humping force-fed patriotic World War II-era drivel… and it's still just as fun as blowing off your hand to celebrate your country's independence.

  George M. Cohan (James Cagney) -- "The Man Who Owned Broadway," now playing FDR in…

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  Review by James 🇺🇦 ★★★★

  What a pleasure this must have been for wartime audiences. Michael Curtiz directs this rapturously wonderful musical biopic with an enigmatic and iconic performance from James Cagney that rescues him from the gangster/tough guy typecast he'd fallen into and reveals his talents as one of the finest actors of the golden age.

  Curtiz would go on to direct Casablanca the very same year, but his work here is equally brilliant. The camera drifts, glides and pans elegantly through the sets and musical numbers with a restless energy that matches Cagney's performance. It's over two hours long but never gets dull. The narrative, told almost entirely in flashback form, speeds through the decades in the life of its subject George M.…

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  Review by Jim Dooley ★★★★★ 2

  Yes, I know that James Cagney is best known for his gangster roles.  But, there is something magical watching his exuberance in the theatrical stories like FOOTLIGHT PARADE and YANKEE DOODLE DANDY.  It is no more an accurate biography than is MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES.  Still, it just enlivens my spirit to watch Cagney in the wonderful production numbers.
     
  When he was interviewed by Peter Bogdanovich, Cagney mentioned that the favorite film of his was “the Cohan thing.”  It certainly helped that he had won the Academy’s Best Actor award for it, but Cagney looks like he was just having the time of his life during the production.  Indeed, even though there are delightful performances throughout, he…