Melody Cruise has a lot going for it as a pre-code romp on a boat from New York to California via the Panama Canal: plenty of double and single entendres, scantily-clad women (mostly blonde), clever use of wipes and other tricky transitions by director Mark Sandrich, an amusing performance by the sputtering Charles Ruggles, impressive songs, including "He's Not the Marrying Kind" by Val Burton and Will Jason. What Melody Cruise does not have is an effective leading man in the person of Phil Harris, a bandleader who made a few movies but was mainly a radio star, first with Jack Benny's show and then with "The Phil Harris and Alice Faye Show" when the two were married.
I do enjoy shipboard stories and romances, but I also prefer musicals that have room for plenty of dancing, which Melody Cruise does not have, though there is an "ice-skating dance" in the style of Busby Berkeley and choreographed by David Gould that has nothing to do with the plot Director Mark Sandrich directed some the best Rogers and Astaire musicals, especially Shall We Dance (1937) with choreography by Hermes Pan (an uncredited assistant dance director on Melody Cruise) and music by George and Ira Gershwin, suggesting that the better his cast, choreographer, and songwriters were the better a director Sandrich was.
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