Word: villainous
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...play within a play-or rather, an opera within a play. What still seemed brand new was the way he used his chorus as a stage audience. Dressed in evening clothes and seated in boxes on either side of the stage, the chorus not only hisses the villain and boos the witch, but actually rushes onstage at one point and hustles the old crone off. When two of the orange-housed princesses die of thirst in the desert, the stage audience saves the third by rushing to the rescue with a fire-bucket of water brought in from the wings...
What defeats the movie is a poverty of invention along the way and a curious indecision as to whether to play for farce or melodrama. For a while, as a Los Angeles lady detective trying to woo secrets out of a villain (Raymond Burr), Actress Trevor deliberately burlesques a movie vamp. After that, whatever travesty the picture makes of its own plot seems purely unintentional...
...European king and his mistress (not Carol and Magda, the author hastens to say) are passing their exile in Mexico City, eating high on the lotus as they await admission to the U.S. With them are the king's chamberlain, a villain as cold as a Danube carp, and a sadistic international financier, who keeps thin, boned whips in his bureau drawer...
Luckless Bob Bramhall, Crimson substitute forward, was the villain and also almost the hero of the frenzied denouement. Trailing by a slight margin through most of the game, Harvard spurted ahead to a 55 to 53 load with three minutes to go. During the subsequent freeze attempt, Bramhall lost the ball in a wild shot at the Yale basket, and then fouled Anderson's successful lay-up to give the Elis their one-point advantage...
Though trickily performed on two stage levels, The Bird Cage is all written at one. It has the arid, conscienceless professionalism of the hack; yet it fails less from being no good than from being no fun. The villain has almost every aspect of villainy except its fascination, the play every ingredient of melodrama except its punch...