Decent but forgettable Fox musical starring Betty Grable and Don Ameche. Grable is an okay film presence, quite cute but not much of an actress. I generally find Ameche a bore, though I do like him in Midnight. Here he plays an Argentinian nobleman, a son of a famous horse breeder. Grable is an American hippophile who falls in love first with Ameche's horse, and then with the man himself. Her family, unfortunately, has bad history with his father, which forces Ameche to return to South America abruptly. Grable follows. Like many of these little, classic musicals, the plot is negligible. You watch it for the pretty colors, the songs and the dancing. I'd prefer more songs myself, but the ones that are here are fine. Carmen Miranda appears in a nightclub sequence and sings two songs (she also pops up right after the opening credits for no reason in particular - I guess they just wanted to get their money's worth). This was her first appearance in a Hollywood movie. The Nicholas Brothers also appear, and knock it out of the park, as always. The equine plot line is sure to please any horse-lover, even though the plot starts to make less and less sense near the end. It devolves into a "screw it, we're just gonna sing a medley of the film's songs" finale, in which the Nicholas Brothers return (but not Miranda).

The singing and dancing are great. The plot is weak here with Argentinian, Don Ameche, with an authentic Spanish accent, romances Bette Grable. For some foolish reason, Ameche's father, an engaging Henry Stephenson, has it in for the Crawford family for an incident that took place long ago between him and Grable's father.Charlotte Greenwood portrays Grable's aunt to perfection. The only thing she will admit to is being 31. She really kicks up her heels as does the rest of the cast.Carmen Miranda portrays herself briefly in two dancing scenes. We can really say that she is wasted here.There is another gem of a performance by J. Carrol Naish, as a Spanish worker for Stephenson.

Nobody should expect to see Hamlet when watching Down Argentine Way. In fact the plot here is thinner and sillier than most of these fluff musical pieces. Still it's kind a fun.Don Ameche is up from Argentina in the USA looking to sell some horses and Betty Grable is looking to buy, the horse and Ameche. But once Don hears that Betty's character has the last name of Crawford, no sale, no way, no how. With mixed motives both looking to get even and an unspoken attraction for Don, Betty and Aunt Charlotte Greenwood take a trip to Buenos Aires for business and all different kinds of pleasure. We also meet Henry Stephenson, Ameche's father, and it does take the whole film to find just what he has against people named Crawford. The prize jumping horse of the Quintana family which is the character names of Ameche and Stephenson who gets turned into a racehorse by the old family trainer, J. Carrol Naish in another of his multitude of ethnic characterizations.Of course this film never got out of the Hollywood back lot at 20th Century Fox Studios and there are even fewer establishing shots of Buenos Aires than usual. The two best things about Down Argentine Way are the musical score written by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon and the specialties of Carmen Miranda and the Nicholas Brothers.This was Carmen's American debut and she opens the film with a song that was forever indelibly identified with her, South American Way. The other hit song in the film is the title song of the picture to which everyone in the cast sings and dances at some point. The notes here say that Don Ameche's voice was dubbed. If so the guy must have been a great soundalike. Probably could fool a voice print identification. Sure sounded like Don Ameche singing from other films I've seen.Look for a nice performance by Leonid Kinskey a rather inept gigolo with a few other sidelines.Down Argentine Way was done before Juan Peron took power so the place was viewed favorably. The Roosevelt administration actively encouraged films to be made showing South America in a favorable light like this one with an idea towards making sure they were allies in the World War we were heading for. It's a nice piece of fluff with good songs Betty Grable's famous legs and the one and only Carmen Miranda.

I thought this film, Betty Grable's first big star part, was surprisingly flat, probably because there wasn't enough tension between her and Don Ameche before the inevitable happy ending. Betty looks great in a couple of her costumes but it's clear that no one realized her talents as a comedienne yet and so she doesn't get to act out as she would in subsequent films. If you want to see Grable and Ameche together, go with "Moon Over Miami" first. Also, it's Carmen Miranda's first U.S. picture, but she just performs two songs and doesn't interact with any of the other stars. Her hat isn't even very big!