It consists of two films: Dynamite Hands, a boxing ring morality play, and Baxter's Beauties of 1933, a musical comedy, both starring the husband-and-wife team of George C. Scott and Trish Van Devere.

Joey Popchik, a young man from a poor family, dreams of one day becoming a lawyer, even attending night school while selling food on the side.

This occurs after he encounters a gruff boxing manager in Gloves Malloy, who gave him a business card after he sees Joey pop an arrogant contender.

As such, he becomes a boxer to raise the money to have her cured, complete with a handshake deal with Malloy (rather than a contract) with a guy named Peanuts as his second in the ring while a first fight is set up in quick time.

Within a couple of months and over two dozen victories but a middling amount of money made, Joey wants to fight at the prominent venue of all in the Madison Square Garden.

After the trial ends, his sister, now cured, announces her pregnancy while Joey credits his friends in his corner as "a man can move mountains with his bare heart."

Baxter's star, Isobel Stuart, is a spoiled alcoholic actress who almost destroys the entire production with her drunkenness and reckless spending of the show's money.

Despite getting all of her demands met, two hours before the curtain is to rise on opening night, Isobel is found unconscious on her dressing room floor, passed out from drunkenness.

Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called the film "a whizbang and hugely enjoyable exercise in nostalgia for the kind of all-singing, all-talking, all-dancing, all-corny movies that everybody says nobody makes any more.

"[11] Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that "it seems so effortlessly funny that I suspect that the real intelligence and discipline that guide the project will be overlooked.

Mr. Gelbart and Mr. Keller not only appreciate the comic uses of the mixed metaphor—one that is driven into the ground to the bursting point—but, more importantly, they have recreated the efficiency and manic, upbeat innocence of those Depression pictures.

George C. Scott and Trish Van Devere star in both films and receive super support from Barry Bostwick, Barbara Harris, Eli Wallach, Ann Reinking, Rebecca York, Art Carney and Kathleen Beller.

The script, which takes particular delight in scrambled language (people are inclined to say things like “I heard it in the papers”), is by Larry Gelbart and Sheldon Keller.

[13] Desmond Ryan of The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that the film "arrives at a time when much of what passes for comedy on the screen can be dismissed as parodies lost.

That it is infinitely superior to the lame thrusts of such films as The Cheap Detective and The World's Greatest Lover is a tribute to both [Stanley Donen's] professional skills and the exuberant affection he brings to the task.

"[14] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film a three-and-a-half star rating, observing that it was "the idea of the very clever Larry Gelbart, who has written a number of M*A*S*H episodes and the comedy hit Oh, God!.

"[15] Tom McElfresh of The Cincinnati Enquirer called it "a film that carefully, affectionately, kids the socks off "those movies they used to make" back in the '30s.

Those who remember montages with train wheels clacking out the passage of time and newspaper headlines shouting advancements of plot will get nostalgia's special pleasure out of 'Movie, Movie.'

Those who have never seen that kind of montage, or the use of the 'iris' to mark scene changes, or even the obligatory overhead 'kaleidoscope' shot of a Busby Berkeley production number, will find the film educational as well as entertaining.

"[17] Donna Chernin of The Plain Dealer remarked that "recent comic tributes to bygone film genres (specifically Mel Brooks' 'Young Frankenstein' and 'Silent Movie') cantered along humorously for a while, but eventually trotted out too much clumsy slapstick.

"[18] Corbin Patrick of The Indianapolis Star said that "the clever scripts as written by Larry Gelbart and Sheldon Keller do not hold these memory gems up to ridicule.

"[19] David Mannweiler of The Indianapolis News said that "if this inviting spoof of the highly stylized Hollywood formula films of the 1930s is seen in the right frame of mind, it qualifies as the funniest movie of 1978, the year in which it was released.

Of course it helps to have George C. Scott, Eli Wallach, Art Carney, Red Buttons and Trish Van Devere in your repertory company, playing such diverse roles as a grandfatherly fight manager; a dandified musical comedy producer; an Oil Can Harry gangster; an Oil Can Harry World War I flying ace; a slightly punchy prize-fight corner man; Pop, the stage door watchman; a heart-as-pure-as-gold-librarian and a sultry, temperamental, but fading Broadway star.

"[26] William Mootz of The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, wrote that it "happily recalls the innocent pleasures of going to the Bijou back in the 1930s, when talkies were young and so was Hollywood.

It amounts to a paste-up of specimens from 1930s Warner Brothers movies not the actual footage, but adroitly skewed museum-replicas of the ideas, attitudes, characters, stories and settings of that studio-factory's output, which kept myriad Depression-era filmgoers happily entertained.

Director Stanley Donen (I remember him when he was still in flannels, directing Singin' in the Rain) has made two movies in one and they're both beautiful takeoffs on those terrific Grade-B films of the 1930s.

Rex Reed said it was "the latest in a long and boring series of remakes", and added that "all they've proved is that they can make old movies that are just as dumb as they made them 40 years ago; in their attempts at parody, they've ended up creating the same thing they're sending up.

"[34] Clyde Gilmour of the Toronto Star wrote that "George Burns introduces the film (at the Uptown 3) in a prologue obviously tacked on at the last minute—and the famous old funnyman doesn't say anything funny.