This is not the smoothest trip: the transitions are bumpy, the lip-synching's imperfect...But rough edges are more than offset by contagious vitality...It may not be precision-tooled, but it's triumphantly alive.

Edna Buxton... really wants to do is sing her own material, but there's no market for that in 1959. If her character were a song, you'd want her key changes to be less abrupt -- there's not much modulation.

It's a big role and [Douglas is] equal to it -- but is the movie? I would have preferred a more limited story that went deeper, instead of a docudrama that covers so much ground, so relentlessly, that we grow weary.

a deft, intelligent movie that sets out a unique stall and offers a genuine, unfiltered independent view of women in the entertainment business…a love letter to creativity and a withering put-down of masculine control in the music industry….