****SPOILER ALERT**** All throughout Australia the summer turned into a deluge of rain and hail stones the size of baseballs that was causing havoc in coastal cities like Sydney. It's under these hectic conditions that tax lawyer David Burton, Richard Chamberlain,got involved in a case, as a defense attorney, involving the death of a local aborigine who was found dead outside a Sydney bar.
Having five fellow aborigines arrested for Billy Cormans,Athol Compton, death it's determined by the police coroner that Billy died of drowning not by violence even though he had bruises on his neck and shoulders. Yet the court decided to prosecute the five for his death charging them with manslaughter instead of murder.
David defending the five gets no help from them in their defense with the accused assailants opting to remain quite and keep what happened to Billy to themselves and take what's coming to them from the court. One of the defendants Chris, David Gulpili, begin to somehow invades David's dreams as if he want's to tell him what was really behind Billy's death.
David at first not taking his dreams of Chris seriously begins to sense that their real when he meet him at the courthouse. Chris confirms David's dreams by showing him a strange looking black rock that David saw Chris have in his dreams. Later meeting Chris and, what turns out to be an aborigine shaman, Charlie (Nandjiwarna Amagula) who came to his house that evening David is told that he, like Charlie, has spiritual powers that he inherited from his mother's grandfather. Those powers will reveal to him the future that has to do with the strange weather conditions that are flooding the Australian continent. The earth,Chris tells David, is going through a gigantic cleansing cycle with the old world about to be washed away and the new world ready to take it's place.
David is confused about what both Chris and Charlie are telling him but as the rains continue to increase and the ocean waves start to rise he feels that something terrible is going to happen. David want's to know if it's all aborigine folklore or there's some scientific facts, or logic, behind their end of world-like revelations.
By now it's obvious that both Chris and Charlie are members of an aborigine tribe right in the heart of modern Sydney. That alone can get Chris off, as well as his four friends, for the murder of Billy. Since the Australian government will not prosecute tribal aborigines, leaving any justice to be done by the tribes themselves. Still Chris refuses to admit he's a member of a native tribe and he and his four friends are convicted of manslaughter in Billy's death with the sentences to be handed down by the judge within days.
David now determined to find out what was the reason for Chris' silence, and why Billy had to die, is taken by Chris to the scene of the crime. It's there that David finds out that Billy betrayed Chris' tribe members by going there with Billy not being a member of Chris's aborigine tribe. It's also revealed to David that he himself has some kind of spiritual connection with the Austrailan aborigines as both Charlie and his step-father Rev. Burton,David Parslow, told him.
The stage is now set for the great and final cleansing cycle that David's been seeing in both his night-time dreams and day-time visions. It comes in the form of a massive tidal wave rolling out of the Pacific Ocean into the Australian coast city of Sydney and then submerges the entire continent.

To be a Buster Keaton fan is to have your heart broken on a regular basis. Most of us first encounter Keaton in one of the brilliant feature films from his great period of independent production: 'The General', 'The Navigator', 'Sherlock Jnr'. We recognise him as the greatest figure in the entire history of film comedy, and we want to see more of his movies. Here the heartbreak begins. After 'Steamboat Bill Jnr', Keaton's brother-in-law Joseph Schenck pressured him into signing a contract that put Keaton under the control of MGM. Keaton became just one more actor for hire, performing someone else's scripts. Then his alcoholism got worse. After 'Steamboat Bill Jnr', Keaton never again made a truly first-rate film. A couple of sources describe a would-be masterpiece comedy that Keaton claimed he *almost* got to make at MGM: a parody of 'Grand Hotel'. Biographer Tom Dardis has offered convincing evidence that Keaton made up this story.
The heartbreak increases because, among the many years of Keaton's long steady decline, he just occasionally came up with a good film ... such as his short comedy 'Grand Slam Opera'. I continue to search for the lost footage of Keaton's dramatic scene with Spencer Tracy in 'It's a Mad Mad World': a sequence in which embittered cop Tracy telephones an old retired crook (Keaton) and tries to recruit his assistance in stealing Smiler Grogan's cash. That footage is almost certainly gone forever, but I keep looking.
'Speak Easily', alas, is one of Keaton's films from the beginning of his decline. MGM were trying to build up Jimmy Durante (who, coincidentally, played Smiler Grogan three decades later) as a new comedy star. Unfortunately, MGM tried to build up Durante by teaming him with Keaton, whose style of comedy was simply incompatible with Durante's. (I'm a fan of both.) Throughout his career, Durante was a merciless scene-stealer: commendably, he knew that he was being built up at Keaton's expense, and Keaton was the only co-star whom Durante never attempted to upstage.
Keaton was often cast as the victim of extremely cruel machinations. In 'Speak Easily', he plays a didactic and humourless Midwestern college professor named Post (because he's as wooden as one) who receives a letter informing him that he's inherited $750,000, which he must travel to New York City to claim. Does he make a 'phone call to verify this? Does he even check the postmark? No; he takes his life's savings out of the bank and rushes to New York. As soon as he's gone, Post's manservant confesses that he wrote the (fake) letter to jostle Professor Post out of his rut!
Post, who thinks he's a 3/4-millionaire, crosses paths with Jimmy Dodge (Durante), who's trying to produce a musical revue but hasn't any money. The characters which these two brilliant comedians are playing onscreen simply fail to intermesh. Keaton is playing one of those eggheads (like Mister Logic in 'Viz') who intellectualises everything. Durante plays one of those annoying hepcats who is incapable of making any straightforward statement because the script requires him always to speak in slang. There's a painfully unfunny dialogue scene in which Durante is trying to talk to Keaton about money, but - instead of coming straight out with it - Durante has to use increasingly contrived slang terms like 'kale', 'cartwheels' and so forth ... while Keaton of course has no idea what Durante's on about. I'll give Keaton credit: his own dry and dusty prairie voice, his flat Kansas accent, is absolutely perfect for the character he's playing here.
Sidney Toler, looking much leaner and more handsome here than he would be just a year later, is impressive as the excitable director of the revue bankrolled (on tick) by Professor Post. Henry Armetta, whom I've never found funny, is even less funny than usual here, offering a running gag with a stupid payoff. Thelma Todd impressed me here, in a more villainous version of the role she played in 'Horse Feathers' (a much funnier movie). Edward Brophy, one of my favourite character actors, is wasted.
Part of the problem with 'Speak Easily' is that supporting characters behave in completely inappropriate ways. Keaton's lawyer shows up at Durante's theatre with an urgent message for Keaton ... but he isn't there, so the lawyer proceeds to divulge Keaton's personal business to the first total stranger he meets. (Fire that lawyer, Buster!) In another scene, Professor Post - the guy who's perceived as bankrolling this musical - blunders into the chorus girls' changing room, and all the chorus girls immediately squeal and cover themselves. I know for a fact that *modern* chorus girls would never react this way, and I seriously doubt that chorus girls in 1932 behaved that way either ... certainly not in response to the 'angel' controlling their show's pursestrings.
SPOILERS COMING. About half an hour into the unfunny 'Speak Easily', the great Jimmy Durante seats himself at the piano, grins into the camera, and does that distinctive little shake of his head as he starts to play a tune. This is the moment when I thought that, at long last, this movie was finally going to settle down to its purpose of entertaining us. Alas, no. Most annoying of all is the ending of this film, which uses the single most hackneyed and implausible cliche in all of comedy: the one in which an utterly incompetent dimwit becomes a star comedian through his own ineptitude. (Keaton would be forced to replay this cliche in a 1955 episode of 'Screen Directors Playhouse'; Chaplin had already used it in 'The Circus'.)
I very nearly wept - in anger and sorrow - at the wasted opportunities in 'Speak Easily'. Mostly out of respect for the work that Keaton, Durante, Toler, Brophy and Miss Todd have done elsewhere, I'll rate this movie 2 points out of 10.