OK, so now I have heard nothin'

The Jazz Singer

(1927)

Wow, I've been avoiding this for . . . well, not my entire adult life, which is what I was thinking earlier, but since I entered the VCR era, more than a quarter of a century ago. "Sometime I should watch that trailblazing Jolson flick, right? I mean, shouldn't I?"

Then as the years passed, I learned that it wasn't all that trailblazing, that sound in movies had been around since there had been movies. I also encountered many discouraging words about the film itself.

Still . . .

Well, now I've seen it. And it's pretty damned bad--slow-paced, sloppily shot, and Jolson! Good god, could he be any smarmier? You want to slap him, even before the point when you'd get black shoe polish on your hand with the slap (and then, yeah, way more so). If you too have long thought you owe it to yourself to see this, you don't, unless you've been very naughty.