No wonder INVITATION TO THE DANCE found no audience at the box office. The first two musical sequences, "Circus" and "Ring Around the Rosy" are monumental bores dragged down by pedestrian stories and, in the second one, inept use of camera trickery to speed up the action.
But the third, "Sinbad the Sailor," makes expert use of the Rimsky-Korsakov ballet score and makes dazzling use of animated effects, especially for the dancing between Kelly and a couple of Arabian guards which are highly original, intricate and amusing examples of combining live action with animation. It's the kind of originality sadly missing in the previously mentioned stories.
The "Sinbad" highlight almost makes up for the rest of the film with its own brand of originality--but alas, the first two sequences are enough to turn many viewers away from watching the final segment.
Summing up: Easy to see why this one failed miserably to attract a target audience with either high or low brow tastes.
But the third, "Sinbad the Sailor," makes expert use of the Rimsky-Korsakov ballet score and makes dazzling use of animated effects, especially for the dancing between Kelly and a couple of Arabian guards which are highly original, intricate and amusing examples of combining live action with animation. It's the kind of originality sadly missing in the previously mentioned stories.
The "Sinbad" highlight almost makes up for the rest of the film with its own brand of originality--but alas, the first two sequences are enough to turn many viewers away from watching the final segment.
Summing up: Easy to see why this one failed miserably to attract a target audience with either high or low brow tastes.