Watch Minnesota: 'Land of Plenty' For Free

Powerful

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Minnesota: Land of Plenty (1942) ** 1/2 (out of 4)With a title like this you know it would have to be an entry in MGM's TravelTalks series. This time out we travel to Minnesota with James A. FitzPatrick as we get our typical history lesson as well as candid views of the state in glorious Technicolor. We visit St. Paul, Rochester, Deluth and Minneapolis as well as visit various parts of the Mississippi River including where it starts (or ends depending on how you look at it) and eventually runs over 2500 miles to New Orleans. Also on hand is the St. Paul Cathedral and the state capital building, which was built in 1904. We learn that nearly half of the population lives on a farm and that the state has the largest pit iron mine in the country. If you're a fan of the series then you're going to find this entry as pleasant as any of them. We get a lot of great locations to look at and get to hear quite a few nice stories about the history.

"More than half of Minnesotans" Mr. Fitzpatrick informs us in his doggedly monotonous voice, "Live on farms devoted to agricultural production." This is as opposed to those people who live on farms devoted to some other purpose, one supposes, like converting old brass bedsteads into cloche hats.Still, one does not look at these Fitzpatrick Traveltalks for their refined sense of rhetorical precision. They are, basically, the professional equivalent of those home vacation movies that your parents -- well, my parents, anyway -- took on vacations and showed to guests on the home screen when they wanted those guests to leave. Almost always worked, too.This makes it clear that these Traveltalks were intended as chasers -- something to get the audience out after a program of a feature, cartoons, selected short subjects and newsreels, instead of waiting around for the next show. You looked at these Traveltalks, combining some beautiful Technicolor scenery with Mr. Fitzpatrick's peppy drivel, then the lights came up and you awoke thinking "Hey! Maybe I should drive to Minnesota!" Then you remembered that gasoline and rubber for tires were rationed and thought "Well, maybe after the war is over."Some pretty pictures, though. Better than the ones my parents took.