The Kissing Bandit (MGM) pokes some good-humored fun at the buskin-and-bluster heroes of costume melodrama. The picture itself is only a costume piece, with a little vaudeville thrown in. Its best features are the broad comedy by J. Carroll Naish, the sentimental songs sung by Frank Sinatra and Kathryn Grayson, and some lively Spanish dances.
The story is about what you would expect in a second-rate comic opera. A proper Bostonian (Sinatra) arrives in Spanish-owned California to take over an inn and a gang of bandits inherited from his father. The rootin'-tootin' father had...