Bird of Paradise

Directed by King Vidor, Bird of Paradise follows Joel McCrea’s Johnny Baker as he falls for a beautiful native (Dolores del Río’s Luana) during a tropical-island yachting trip. Filmmaker Vidor, armed with a script by Wells Root, Wanda Tuchock, and Leonard Praskins, delivers a pervasively underwhelming and uninvolving endeavor that strikes all the wrong notes right from the get-go, as the movie’s been saddled with a seriously off-putting premise that paves the way for a hopelessly tiresome (and flat-out interminable) midsection and second half – with the emphasis generally placed on the central character’s dialogue-free exploits (ie there’s a lot of frolicking here). And while the third act admittedly does possess a handful of stirring sequences, including a surprisingly engrossing set-piece wherein Johnny rescues Luana from a deadly ceremony, Bird of Paradise is, for the most part, dominated by long stretches of absolute tedium in which virtually nothing of interest occurs – with the leads’ palpable absence of romantic chemistry only exacerbating the unwatchable vibe. The end result is a complete misfire that feels much, much longer than its 80 minutes, and one can’t help but wonder what drew Vidor (and stars McCrea and del Rio) to this thoroughly lackluster material.

* out of ****