Belle of the Nineties

As tends to be the case with Mae West’s output, Belle of the Nineties comes off as a hopelessly forgettable effort that seems to have been assembled around a series of admittedly strong one-liners (ie the story is generic to an almost absurd degree). West stars as Ruby Carter, a beauty queen who decides to move from St. Louis to New Orleans after she ends things with her boxer boyfriend (Roger Pryor’s Tiger Kid). Once in the Big Easy, Ruby signs a contract with club owner Ace Lamont (John Miljan) and quickly finds herself fending off his advances – with the situation eventually complicated by Tiger Kid’s inevitable arrival on the scene. (There’s also a tedious subplot involving a stolen necklace.) Belle of the Nineties moves at an aggressively plodding pace that persists for the duration of its mercifully brief running time, with West’s simplistic screenplay boasting few attributes designed to capture and sustain one’s interest. (It doesn’t help, either, that the film contains a raft of forgettable music numbers.) The movie is, in the end, unlikely to please even the most ardent of West’s followers, with the almost total absence of positive attributes, aside from West’s mere presence, confirming Belle of the Nineties‘ place as a misguided star vehicle best left in obscurity.

*1/2 out of ****