Sadly Over-hyped

Highly Overrated But Still Good

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

"They Can't Take That Away From Me," "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off," and other Gershwin tunes allow Astaire and Rogers to strut their stuff. These movies are always about an excuse to dance, so this silly plot doesn't really matter. Fred is a ballet instructor who falls in love with Rogers' character and talks her into working for him. At first she isn't impressed but things start to settle. They travel on an ocean liner and someone starts a rumor that they are actually married. She is furious (as she is in just about every one of their films together). They have decided to get married and then divorced, to get the rumors off their backs. There is a silly, contrived scene at the end which doesn't matter because we know they will be back together, no matter what.

This must be judged one of the lesser examples of Fred and Ginger's work. Not that it's so poor it should be avoided. It's mostly that here they don't get together and dance often or intricately enough. The story makes little sense, but then none of their plots ever did. They're beside the point. But, anyway, this is the one in which Astaire imitates a Russian ballet dancer.George Gershwin was finally seduced into writing songs for a movie but the producers were wary. George had a tendency to write classical music, the kiss of death, even with jazz elements. He had to telegram the producers with a reassuring message that he was determined to "write hits." As it turned out, the tunes were pleasant enough, including "Slap That Bass" (in the simulacrum of a ship's engine room), and the title tune. Two of the songs became standards: "They Can't Take That Away From Me" and "Let's Call The Whole Thing Off". (You say tomayto and I say tomah-to.) In many ways, the most inventive tune has no lyrics at all. It's called "Promenade" and appears when Astaire and Rogers walk their dogs on the deck of an ocean liner.And if you've ever wondered what the design style known as Art Deco was, you should definitely check this movie out because the style is here in all its extravagance in the production design by Van Nest Polglase, who by this time was having trouble with the bottle -- the white sets and furniture, the frosted glass with etched deer, the uninterpretable curlicues, and all the rest of it. It's often claimed that it Polglase's sets, all the telephones and their cords were white. It's a bloody lie. The telephones here are silver.Anyway, Gershwin did manage to avoid anything resembling classical music -- a good idea since neither dancer was trained in ballet -- except for one number featuring Harriet Hoctor, a former Ziegfield Follies entertainer. OMG, what a woman. She dances well enough, fingertips aflutter, more skillfully and more flamboyantly feminine than Ginger Rogers, but then she does this THING with her back. En point, she bends backwards into such a lengthy arc that her head almost touches the floor -- and then she repeatedly taps the top of her head with the toe of her ballet slipper. It's a shtick that belongs in an out take from "The Exorcist." There's an earlier number with Astaire and Rogers on roller skates but I could never find much grace in roller skating.It begins slowly. It's an hour almost before the two leads dance together. And the end has dozens of women dancing around wearing masks of Ginger Rogers' face. The movie didn't make as much money as earlier outings. Time for something new -- but what? The pair tried a musical biography of a pair of real dancers whose time had long passed, Vernon and Irene Castle. Maybe what they needed was a stronger and funnier plot line. Rogers never got one in a musical. Astaire had only one, "The Bandwagon" in the early 50s. I remember when Ginger Rogers passed away. She merited one or two lines in Newsweek, hardly a whisper. It was fifty years or more since her heyday and Americans have little interest in vernacular history.

After "The Gay Divorcée," the first starring vehicle for Astaire and Rogers, established the formula of breezy mixture of musical numbers and comedy, the duo kept appearing in films that varied the formula only slightly, and so it goes here. This one features the music of Gershwin, including "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off," "They All Laughed," and "They Can't Take That Away from Me," and Horton and Blore once again provide the laughs. It's pleasant enough, but falls short compared to the likes of "Top Hat" and "Swing Time." While the roller skate routine is fun, this one lacks a signature number. The script is uninspired and the comedy is forced.

Surely one of the silliest and most improbable plots in all the Astaire-Rogers series –-and that's saying a lot! — this 1937 film still features many delights: foremost among them of course are the dances of Fred solo and with Ginger, and the now classic songs of the Gershwin brothers. Amazingly, some of the best of these, the immortal "They Can't Take That Away from Me" for example, take up only a minute or two of screen time, as if the producers at RKO couldn't wait to get them over with so they could get back to the story. More time in the film is given over to the confused and outraged antics of floor manager Eric Blore than to some greatest songs in the great American Song Book. The film ends, however, with a breath-taking bit of pure exuberance, American dancing at its very, very best. The quarreling lovers are reunited singing and dancing to the title song. "Shall we dance or keep on moping?" As then and now a very good question. Absurd plot line and bad jokes aside, a film classic well worth watching again and again.