"Big Boy has gone unseen for years. And no wonder. Al Jolson plays all but the final musical number in blackface, as a stable hand who eventually rides a horse named Big Boy to victory in the Kentucky Derby. Jolson had donned blackface in stage earlier pioneering talkies The Jazz Singer and The Singing Fool, but in those films he had been cast as a singer who blackened his face as part of his minstrel act. The negative reaction to Big Boy came from reviewers who were offended not for the reasons we might assume now, but because this 'black man' was entirely too free with his insults towards whites! And, indeed, the film's ideology is quite a bit more complex than one would guess. On humbler levels, Big Boy is a rare, perversely charming document. Translated with little alteration from his stage success, it's the single film to capture Jolson's brash vaudeville style. Among his songs here are 'Liza Lee,' 'Tomorrow Is Another Day,' and 'My Baby and Me.' For better or worse, you are unlikely to have seen a film anything like this one." Scott Simmon