Part of Fox' Shirley Temple wave, "Dimples" showcases the amazing talent of child star Shirley Temple, who sings, tap dances and effectively acts through an otherwise standard family feel-good studio vehicle. Rated a cautionary PG, the film is also a curio of the times, preserving the ugly black stereotypes of the era as evidenced by the horrifying persona - lazy, dim-witted and clumsy - realized by Steppin Fetchit. The film's finale - a hand-waving minstrel show, with Fetchit himself in blackface, is pretty unsettling.

Nevertheless, Fox' unedited presentation of this classic Temple vehicle, bolstered by a fine supporting cast (particularly Frank Morgan, as Temple's thieving grandfather), is available in 2 versions on the disc: the original black and white version is rather grainy, and there's an odd haze at the edges of several wide shots; the colorized version uses the same limited, pitiful colour spectrum which characterizes the computer-coloured software of the 1980s, and the active noise reduction gives the transfer a smeared texture. The full screen transfer is also very close to the edge, slightly cropping the End Credits roll, with visible bending at the edges.

The original mono mix is fairly coarse, and distortion is evident in louder dialogue passages, and Temple 's singing. The pseudo-stereo mix minimizes these flaws, but the trade-off is an unpleasant drainpipe effect, with sound effects deeply affected by the rather cheap process.

© 2002 Mark R. Hasan