Although a pleasant enough programmer, Broadway Musketeers remains a prime example of how dramatically Hollywood films changed after 1934, when the production code became strictly enforced. A more or less straightforward remake of Three on a Match (1932), this story of three school chums vowing to meet on the same date each year has none of the grittiness of its predecessor. There are no hints here of cocaine addiction or child abuse, nor is there any of the edgy acting typical of early Depression-era heroines like Joan Blondell and Ann Dvorak. Instead we get cuddly comic book gangsters and almost too polished performances from Warners' second-tier stock company. Margaret Lindsay, in the Ann Dvorak role, goes from bored stockbroker's wife to bored gambler's wife and without the aforementioned addiction, loses all motivation for so cruelly abandoning her little child. Ann Sheridan sings a couple of songs in her characteristic throaty voice and turns her burlesque queen into a Fifth Avenue matron as swiftly as Joan Blondell had five years earlier. The real joy in this version, however, is dim-witted Marie Wilson -- and didn't Warner Bros. know it -- but it is a stock assignment and she, too, must take some responsibility for turning a taut drama into just another polished Grade-B movie.
by Hans J. Wollstein
review
