A vehicle for the "It Girl" Clara Bow, "Hula" showcases the talents of its ever-vivacious star but is an otherwise generic melodramatic romance that veers towards racism in its cultural appropriation of Hawaiian culture. At least, it's short, with a runtime barely over an hour. Bow plays the titular Hula (of all the names), who falls in love with the chin-dimpled but married Anthony (played by Clive Brook). There's also another woman who's not his wife interested in Anthony, and she completes the love triangle until the wife shows up. Then, she conveniently leaves, and the wife takes her place as Hula's competitor. Hula does do some crazy, life-threatening things to win her man's affections, though (i.e. Nearly falling over a waterfall, falling off a horse and blowing stuff up with dynamite).
Hollywood's premiere flapper type, Bow's star persona is reworked here by having her unconventional and wild behavior explained as having been influenced by the natives (although besides a cameo by surfing legend Duke Kahanamoku, with an insulting intertitle of him speaking broken English, hardly a native is to be seen). This includes her scandalous outfits or lack thereof (the film begins with Bow swimming nude), her riding a horse inside and, of course, her namesake dance.
