all show and no go

alternative all show, no go

1. having only superficial qualities

   The uniform of tight jeans and tube tops, slinky skirts and three-inch heels, however, is all show and no go.

   2014, Tony Perez-Giese, Send More Idiots: A Novel, Archway Publishing, →ISBN, page 197

   3 more examples

   “You know you are, and here you are doing all you can to marry nice, rich, little Kitty Marling to a man,—a kind of piebald circus horse, curious to look at, all show and no go. A duller man I don't know. Romance and you trying your best to keep Kitty from Wrexford, who's a sort of nineteenth-century Sidney.”

   1890, Cosmopolitan, Volume 8, Hearst Corporation, page 107

   We who could benefit from the UN's taking action felt that they were all show and no go. The UN troops appeared to be some form of international effort to solve a problem, but they were actually making the situation worse.

   2008, Brigitte Gabriel, Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America, St. Martin's Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 82

   When it came to famine and suffering, he looked for the nearest exit. He failed Hell Week. He was all show and no go. In Texas they have a term for that: Big hat, no cattle.

   2013, Steve Farrar, Real Valor: A Charge to Nurture and Protect Your Family, David C Cook, →ISBN, page 72