Editing The Broadway Melody (section)

===Retrospective===
Historically, ''The Broadway Melody'' is often considered the first complete example of a Hollywood musical. Contemporary critics now view the movie as cliché-ridden and overly melodramatic, despite the fact that it was considered innovative for its time and contributed to the concept and structure of musical films.<ref>{{cite book|last=Levy|first=Emanuel|title=All about Oscar: The History and Politics of the Academy Awards|year=2003|publisher=Continuum|isbn=978-0-8264-1452-6|page=200}}</ref> It currently holds a rating of 42% at Rotten Tomatoes, based on 31 reviews, with a weighted average of 5.50/10. The site's consensus is that the film "is interesting as an example of an early Hollywood musical, but otherwise, it's essentially bereft of appeal for modern audiences".<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/broadway_melody/ |title=The Broadway Melody |website=[[Rotten Tomatoes]] |publisher=[[Fandango Media]] |access-date=January 25, 2025}}</ref>

Assessing the film in 2009, [[James Berardinelli]] wrote, "''The Broadway Melody'' has not stood the test of time in ways that many of its more artistic contemporaries have. Some of its deficiencies can be attributed to ways in which the genre has been re-shaped and improved over the years, but some are the result of the studio's validated belief that viewers would be willing to ignore bad acting and pedestrian directing in order to experience singing, dancing, and talking on the silver screen."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=1848 |title=The Broadway Melody |last=Berardinelli |first=James |author-link=James Berardinelli |date=November 1, 2009 |website=Reelviews |publisher=James Berardinelli |access-date=December 10, 2014 }}</ref>