My mom often tells me about how, growing up in Galena Park, Texas, the local cinema was the hot place. Among her favorite flicks there were Vincent Price's stuff (deliberate camp); among her least favorite flicks were Doris Day's stuff (the wholesome girl next door).
Watching "My Dream Is Yours", I can see why she had no respect for these sorts of movies. This one is an infantilizing story of a cute-and-nothing-else woman getting her break into show biz. I only knew about the movie because one of the Looney Tunes DVDs showed a scene from it in which Bugs Bunny, Doris Day and Jack Carson tell a boy to wake up to the tune of Franz Liszt's "Second Hungarian Rhapsody". The truth is, Liszt must be spinning in his grave knowing how they misused his song here. And the people behind the Looney Tunes cartoons should have known better than to let their greatest creation get used in this swill.
But as it is, the Bugs Bunny scene is really the only scene worth watching; in fact, if you watch only that scene, you just might come away with a good impression of the movie. As for me, I watched the movie only to heckle it like Mike, Servo and Crow do to the crummy movies sent them by Dr. Forrester on "Mystery Science Theater 3000" (the truth is, "MST3K" would have a field day with "MDIY"). Among my jeers were:
(as Jack Carson picks up a phone): "Do you have Prince Albert in a can?"
(as Jack Carson and Doris Day are about to board the plane): "Hey, I bet Mohammed Atta* is one of your fellow passengers!"
"My dream is yours..." "Yeah? Well, my nightmare is this movie!"
OK, so I think that I've done as much as I can to describe how stupid this movie was, so I'll now look at it from another angle. I watched this hunk o'junk a few hours after I went to see "Grindhouse". The only similarity between the two movies is that they're both escapism. But the Robert Rodriguez-Quentin Tarantino double feature was blatantly absurd, and quite proud of being as gross as possible; it comes out very honorable as a result. This one, on the other hand, believes itself to be as much a masterpiece as "Citizen Kane". I would just like to say that this movie reaches that one's quality about to the extent that "Ishtar" does. In fact, it makes you feel like you're turning into one of the zombies from "Grindhouse". In fact, while Doris Day's character was supposed to be cute, I just prefer to believe that she was uglier than any of those zombies.
In conclusion, unless you're one of those people who thinks that any hokey movie turns into a masterpiece just because a bunch of people start singing, you'll definitely want to avoid this movie. In fact, one thing that you could do is rent the movie but go straight to the special features and watch the Looney Tunes cartoon "A Ham in a Role", in which the Goofy Gophers torment a Shakespearean actor. Stick with that one and avoid "My Dream Is Yours" (except maybe the Bugs Bunny scene).
*In case you've forgotten, Mohammed Atta was one of the 9/11 hijackers. If you consider it illogical to mention him and "Grindhouse" while reviewing this movie...well, I consider this movie as much a piece of crap as any of the 9/11 hijackers, and I think that I speak for at least most of my generation when I say that we far prefer gross-out exploitation movies to anything starring Doris Day.