The songwriting team of Kalmar and Ruby contributed a handful of lasting standards to the American Songbook. Some of them (including "Nevertheless," "Thinking of You" and of course the title song) are included in this fast-paced but mostly unexciting movie about their decades-long collaboration. Chronology and basic facts, not to mention period clothing styles and musical arrangements are barely considered, as was typical of mid-century songwriter biopics. The hook here is the fact that the two tolerated each other even though their main interests lay elsewhere (Ruby was a wannabe baseball player and Kalmar a playwright and magician at heart).
In any case, there is plenty of dancing given the casting of Fred Astaire as lyricist Bert Kalmar, here partnered with Vera-Ellen, so the pair get to show their impressive footwork in several unspectacular but charming routines in candy-colored sets. Red Skelton as composer Ruby is given a measure of physical shtick in baseball field scenes but generally his tendency to mug is kept in check by the strictures of the boilerplate "and-then-they-wrote-this"-style narrative.
A brunette Debbie Reynolds (in a costume that actually resembles something from the Twenties) pops up in Helen Kane-ish mode as a passerby who just happens to notice the team working through "I Wanna Be Loved by You" on a piano near a moving truck and spontaneously injects the well-known "boop-boop-a-doop" at the appropriate pauses; cut to a marquee with "Helen Kane in 'Good Boy'" and a fully orchestrated stage performance with Reynolds performing the whole song while teasing the young Carleton Carpenter. The ever-elegant Arlene Dahl is on hand playing Ruby's wife Eileen Percy; she sings "I Love You So Much" in the only really lavish number, a Ziegfeld-style affair on a staircase flanked by a tuxedoed male ensemble.
"Three Little Words" is mostly for hardcore film musical buffs or those seeking pure escapism.
In any case, there is plenty of dancing given the casting of Fred Astaire as lyricist Bert Kalmar, here partnered with Vera-Ellen, so the pair get to show their impressive footwork in several unspectacular but charming routines in candy-colored sets. Red Skelton as composer Ruby is given a measure of physical shtick in baseball field scenes but generally his tendency to mug is kept in check by the strictures of the boilerplate "and-then-they-wrote-this"-style narrative.
A brunette Debbie Reynolds (in a costume that actually resembles something from the Twenties) pops up in Helen Kane-ish mode as a passerby who just happens to notice the team working through "I Wanna Be Loved by You" on a piano near a moving truck and spontaneously injects the well-known "boop-boop-a-doop" at the appropriate pauses; cut to a marquee with "Helen Kane in 'Good Boy'" and a fully orchestrated stage performance with Reynolds performing the whole song while teasing the young Carleton Carpenter. The ever-elegant Arlene Dahl is on hand playing Ruby's wife Eileen Percy; she sings "I Love You So Much" in the only really lavish number, a Ziegfeld-style affair on a staircase flanked by a tuxedoed male ensemble.
"Three Little Words" is mostly for hardcore film musical buffs or those seeking pure escapism.