Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Professor Popinjay

Because it’s the 50s and every movie must be named after a song! This film takes place in a small Indiana town and I did my research, Indiana actually has lots of bays. In a show of tremendous generosity, Michigan has actually allowed Indiana to border a small portion of the Great Lakes. So the title is vaguely applicable but it gives no indication as to what the film is actually about.

As I watched this I kept thinking it was awfully familiar. Same dad. Same hunk. Same mischievous little brother with an overactive imagination. Same boring weiner trying to serenade Doris Day. Same Doris Day.

Oh! I get it! On Moonlight Bay is the prequel to By the Light of the Silvery Moon! They just gave the sequel the ol’ Home Alone 2 treatment. Just change the locale and do it all over again. If it worked the first time why shouldn’t it work again in someplace picturesque like 1915 Indiana?

Speaking of 1915 this film did not really feel like it was 1915. Not once did I see these characters and think “Yes, Mark Twain died five years ago.” I think a strange disconnect happens when I see people from a bygone era portraying people from an even earlier bygone era. And yet when I watch something like Buster Keaton’s The General which took place during the American Civil War (1861) but was filmed in 1927, I felt like the film was effective at portraying the earlier time period. Perhaps it’s because the clothes were more drastically different between eras. It’s like trying to grasp that the Captain Marvel movie took place in the 90s but the only clear indication is the presence of phone booths and blockbuster video.

Just as in By the Light of the Silvery Moon, the best part of this film is the little brother’s monkey shines what gets the whole family entangled in a scandal. Yes it’s very similar to its sequel but On Moonlight Bay is different enough to make it interesting. Having watched them in the wrong order, in retrospect I’d have to say there were a few nods to the first in the sequel that I didn’t catch on first viewing and I found myself wondering what that was all about but both films were enjoyable regardless. Just watch On Moonlight Bay first if you’re so inclined.

Click here to read my Non-Review of By the Light of the Silvery Moon, sequel to On Moonlight Bay: