Great Film overall

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Typical Hollywood fanfare with rich playboy Farley Granger sentenced to 30 days for speeding in a tiny hick town. Engaged to Ann Miller, he protests his sentence to no avail, but gets the judge's daughter to get him out of the slammer for one night.Ann Miller does two nice dances but her talents are largely wasted here along with Billie Burke, who plays Granger's mother. Missing in the film is that usual high-pitched voice of hers. Instead, she plays the wealthy mother without much fanfare on her part either.Constant interruptions while saying grace come about due to the presence of the boyfriend of the judge's daughter, an aspiring dancer, who yearns for such a career on Broadway. Even his dad S.Z. Sakall is subdued here and only confuses the word pardon with something else.

Van's "hippity hop" dance number was done on the MGM back lot, not a sound stage. The movie version has at least 3 cuts, so it wasn't filmed in one long take. Busby Berkeley choreographed the number, with 8,523 hops, on both feet for 3 minutes, TRT. (It's not the same as "Take Me to Broadway" which is danced inside his father's store.In recent years, the "Jumping Song" performed by Bobby Van has been referenced in commercials and music videos, including one for Goldfrapps song "Happiness", in which a happy man jumps through the streets, shaking hands with people and playing with garbage can lids.Rick Belrow Livingston (Farley Granger), in love with self-obsessed Broadway star Lisa, (Ann Miller), is sentenced to 30 days in jail for speeding through a small town. Quite by accident, he meets the daughter of the judge, Cindy Kimbell (Jane Powell). He persuades her to let him out for one night, so that he can visit Lisa on the premise he is seeing his "poor sick mother" (Billie Burke) on her birthday. After tracking him down and bringing him back to town, Cindy starts to fall for Livingston, but Dr. Schemmer (S.Z. Sakall) wants her to marry his son (Bobby Van) even though he desperately wants a career on Broadway.

It's just too bad more people didn't appreciate Bobby Van when he was around. I've never seen him before, but I certainly will remember his energy and incredible footwork. Where are they now? 50 years seemed to have taken away the fun of making a entertaining musical. Watching rappers and boy bands has diminished our appreciation of what dance was all about. Donald OConnor, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Danny Kaye all had desire that is lacking in movies now. Perhaps the cycle will return and will get away from Gangsta rappers and back to a style of entertainment that celebrated life rather than threaten it. Great work Bobby... Too bad I missed you. ......Wayne

Film buffs who rave about the classic MGM Musicals should keep in mind that there was only one "Singin' In The Rain" but a lot of dull, squeaky-clean generic musicals like this one. You might be tempted to see the whole movie, because there's one truly fabulous musical number that's widely excerpted, but the rest is hardly worth seeing.Singing ingenue Jane Powell is the small-town girl of the title, who meets a bad, rich, big-city rake, falls in love, hunts him down, reforms him, and marries him (I'm SO glad that plot has gone out of fashion). Powell is wide-eyed and sticky-sweet, Farley Granger is embarrassed, and Ann Miller and the rest of the supporting players are the same as they are in every other MGM musical ever made. Small-town virtue is relentlessly praised, big-city ways relentlessly bashed (although Farley's "bad" ways are pretty tame), and it's all as sugary and colorful as a lollipop. The one fabulous number is the one where Ann Miller sings "I Gotta Hear That Beat" and taps wildly around a huge stage with disembodied hands holding musical instruments sticking out of the floor. It's way cool, but it's excerpted in "That's Entertainment" (or was it "TEII"?) which is a much better way to pass ninety minutes.