This movie is a failure on so many fronts, I'm not sure where to start.
Perhaps by saying how very sorry I am that it's such a disappointment. I very much like Gene Kelly's other work, love a lot of Cole Porter, many George Cukor movies, etc. Yet everything goes wrong here.
To begin with, this is a dud of a musical. None of the numbers come close to being memorable, the plot is uninteresting, the characters all often disagreeable. And if you were ever to watch it a second time - which I don't recommend - to see if the end resolves the apparent contradictions that come up throughout the movie, I suspect you'd find that it doesn't.
Because the plot and the characters are uninteresting, the actors really have nothing to work with. Kelly has been so good in so many movies, it is almost painful to watch him try to do something with this mess of a role. The three women, though all fine dancers, simply don't have the star power between them that you need to bring off such a movie. Even Mitzi Gaynor, a great performer, seems weak here, except in her one dance number with Kelly, the motorcycle number, where they are both first rate.
There's no point in going on further. There just isn't anything here of interest. More's the pity.
Perhaps by saying how very sorry I am that it's such a disappointment. I very much like Gene Kelly's other work, love a lot of Cole Porter, many George Cukor movies, etc. Yet everything goes wrong here.
To begin with, this is a dud of a musical. None of the numbers come close to being memorable, the plot is uninteresting, the characters all often disagreeable. And if you were ever to watch it a second time - which I don't recommend - to see if the end resolves the apparent contradictions that come up throughout the movie, I suspect you'd find that it doesn't.
Because the plot and the characters are uninteresting, the actors really have nothing to work with. Kelly has been so good in so many movies, it is almost painful to watch him try to do something with this mess of a role. The three women, though all fine dancers, simply don't have the star power between them that you need to bring off such a movie. Even Mitzi Gaynor, a great performer, seems weak here, except in her one dance number with Kelly, the motorcycle number, where they are both first rate.
There's no point in going on further. There just isn't anything here of interest. More's the pity.