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 The film stars a 22 year old Judy Garland and is a "warm turn-of-the-century
delight." They talk up the set design and the camera work claiming that this
"terrific blend of nostalgia and bright humor proves that quality storytelling
and filmmaking (Vincente Minnelli) never go out of style." The songs, The Boys
Next Door, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, and The Trolley Song are
featured. They finish up with this gem: "Clang-clang, ding-ding, zing-zing:
don't miss it!" 1944, 113 minutes, VHS
In this beloved musical effort set against the backdrop of the 1903 World's
Fair, Judy Garland sings her way through a world where the most pressing
problem of the day is the fact that the boy-next-door's tailor is closed
meaning that he can't get his tuxedo in time for the big graduation dance. As
is to be expected in this kind of film, the lovable grandfather comes through
and lends his tuxedo to the young man. I'm not sure what it says about Judy's
date
that he would have the same build as a seventy year old man, but this was back
in olden times where chicks actually wore corsets instead of letting their beer
bellies hang over the fraying elastic waistband of their stretch pants like so
many of St. Louis' women do today. You see, if you've ever been to St. Louis,
I would recommend against seeing this movie. It's very hard to take seriously
for any number of reasons, chiefly though because the St. Louis of this movie
exists in the same United States as the River City of The Music Man. It's a clean, bright, cheery, whites-only town that occurred only in the
imagination of the film makers. I know that this movie was based on some
woman's memories of her childhood there, but something tells me she didn't get
out much (and surely never went across the river). I've been to St. Louis a
number of times and actually lived there for awhile (well not actually in the
city - do you think I'm Mad Max or something?) and I have to tell you that all I
remember is that it gets powerful hot, there's Steak & Shakes everywhere, and
strangled women are always being discovered in local parks. We'll probably
have to wait for the DVD release of this film for all those details to be
addressed.  Judy Garland plays Esther Smith, the second child in a family of four,
snobbish, social climbing, and whining daughters. The Smiths have it rough,
what with their father being a fancy lawyer and only having one maid and all,
but somehow they make it through the hard times, their hearts kept warm with
the knowledge that the World's Fair will be opening up in their neighborhood
the next year. In fact, they constantly talk about this fair like it's the
next Star Wars movie. I was half expecting Esther to quit her job as "vapid
high school junior" and camp out at the fair box office so that she could be
first in line for the dang thing. What's the big whoop? It's not like Jango Fett
is going to be at the fair or anything. Esther has an older, more snooty
sister named Rose. Rose is one of those not too attractive types that thinks
she's entitled to any rich guy's affections and she's mighty put out when this
dope from New York calls her long distance and doesn't propose. There's a
reason your boyfriend is in NYC and you're still stuck in that cow town, loser.
This phone call scene takes place at dinner time and we get to see that the
father of this clan is one of those guys that thinks he runs the show even
though the house is made up primarily of females. He talks a lot about how
he's a good provider and is generally clueless about what is going on with Rose
and this guy. Meanwhile Esther is hung up on John Truitt, a generic dude that
lives next door and that she pines after for no good reason (he's always
talking about basketball practice and losing his tux). I was never sure what
this film was about. It almost seemed like they were trying to make a movie
not about characters or story, but about a feeling. The feeling of course,
being a small town America where problems are so endearingly insignificant
that they merely serve to fill the time between boring dances and Judy Garland
musical numbers. I'm not sure how modern audiences relate to this wish
fulfillment type stuff (though I'm sure that rich, white folks absolutely
looooove it!), but it was made while we were embroiled in WWII, so in that
context you can understand why people would want to believe this kind of world
once existed (I would hope that people today didn't wish for a return to 1903
with its dirt roads, lack of refrigeration, and trolley cars. Would you
really give up your car to ride with a bunch of stinky Missourians?)  When Esther isn't singing about how much she loves John Truitt or how much she
enjoys riding trolley cars, the movie focuses on her kid sister, Tootie.
Tootie is about five years old is one of those precocious movie tots that gets
into all kinds of mischief like singing drinking songs at Esther's parties
(that's a good gig for a five year old), throwing flour in the face of mean
neighbors and derailing trolley cars. Now that sounds like the kind of St.
Louis kid that I saw in action down there. Tootie gets herself all busted up
in the big trolley car crack up and immediately begins selling the idea that it
was John Truitt that inflicted the injuries upon her by beating her up. Aside
from the fact that Tootie is the coolest five year old you ever saw outside of
a juvenile detention center, you have to really question Esther as she swallows
this line of malarkey and marches on over to John Truitt's house to teach him
a lesson. Could someone please tell me why you would believe it when a five
year old tells you that she was just beaten up by the clean cut high school
kid that lives next door? The best part of Tootie's story is that I don't
think she ever came out with a discernible motive as to why Truitt punked her
out like the five year old girl she was. Esther goes over there and assaults
John, then comes back and finds out that maybe Tootie was not being entirely
truthful about it. Initially she's mad at Tootie because she caused Esther to
go beat up her true love, but since this is a feel-good movie about small town
dummies, they all have a good laugh about the incident in pretty short order.
It turns out that John was actually hiding Tootie from the fuzz when they came
to investigate the trolley hijacking or whatever she was embroiled in. I
didn't feel too bad for John though, because he looked like one of those dudes
that didn't mind being bitten and clawed by Judy Garland, if you catch my
meaning.  If you're like me (and if you aren't, you surely aspire to be) then you're
probably thinking that long distance phone calls, kids vandalizing public
transportation, and Dorothy beating up the boy next door are nice enough, but
really aren't the level of drama you would try and hang a big time Hollywood
musical on. Oh wait, the World's Fair is coming! Okay, the real drama, the
real conflict, the thing that causes us to remain glued to our seats (aside
from the fact that we're anxiously awaiting the Have Yourself A Merry Little
Christmas number) is that daddy Smith comes home one night and announces that
he has just gotten a kick ass lawyering job in New York City. New York City?
Get a rope! Actually, everyone else in the family has precisely that reaction
as they all look at him like he cut a smelly Kansas City fart. Immediately
everyone drops the bomb on him and all the women prattle on about how they
simply can't move to the City, because Rose is graduating and needs to find
someone dumb enough to marry her, Esther is going to be a senior, but most of
all because St. Louis is going to have the World's Fair! I think most of us
can understand the intense personal torment all these characters are going
through since their father is trying to ruin their lives by not only having a
good job, but then having the audacity to have been so good at it that his
partners are offering him an even better job in a better location. This is
pretty much the same type of problems the few families with fathers in my
trailer park have. Well, all except the job part. Esther and her sister try
to valiantly soldier on through their burden by concocting some half-baked
scheme to ruin some girl's time at the dance they're all going to. See, this
girl is
dating the boy that Rose likes and Rose's brother also likes this girl, so the
whole Smith family is in a tizzy over this chick and Esther figures a way to
really get inside her head. What she's gone ahead and done is fill up this
girl's dance card with all the icky boys so that she won't have time to dance
with the guy Rose likes. I guess this was back before all-night raves and girls
on
X because they actually had these little cards where you slotted people in to
dance with (as opposed to the slotting they'd be doing out back in the barn
after
the dance was over) and no one wanted to dance with the ugly guys, but if your
card had them pencilled in, you were hosed. Everything works out though,
because this girl is gracious enough (back in 1903 there was an over-abundance
of graciousness) to give this guy to Rose and she says she wants to be with
Rose's brother anyway. Esther is stuck somehow with the bogus dance card full
of nerds. Wah, wah, wah, waaaaah! With that crisis resolved (how much can one family be expected to endure!) they
then have to deal with little Tootie's complete emotional breakdown. It all
happens when she gets sad around Christmas time about leaving St. Louis (with
me it was pretty much the opposite - every time I rolled across the St. Charles
river toward the Gateway City, I became very gaseous). She throws a classic
temper tantrum that involves her bashing a bunch of completely fake snowmen
that the family had built earlier. Esther comforts her and the documentary
after the film goes on and on about how they got little Tootie to cry (director
Vincente Minnelli says he told her her dog croaked while Tootie herself says
that she prided herself as being just a good a cryer as June Allison. Huh?).
They get her all settled down and the old man eventually realizes that having
five or six women (depending on if you count the maid who doesn't know her
place) pissed at you when you're trying to start a new job, just isn't worth
the professional opportunity and advancement you would be gaining, so he
announces that they are in fact staying in St. Louis, causing real New Yorkers
everywhere to breathe a sigh of relief. The movie then peters out as they go
to the World's Fair and ooh and ahh over the gaudy lights that adorn the
exhibit halls. The movie looks very bright - an early color effort clearly
showing off the benefits of that particular advance, but the movie is so sugary
sweet, you can't help but make gagging noises (even after you promised yourself
you wouldn't since this is your girlfriend's mom's favorite movie) and you
wince at how dated all of these people and their tribulations have become. The
musical numbers include a variety of slow songs I couldn't remember (I did
recall the title tune, that horribly cheesy Trolley Song, and the classic
Christmas song) and the fact that they tried to "integrate" the music into the
movie meant you didn't get any big show stopping production numbers like you
did in The Music Man or Singin' In The Rain. There's some rather bland hoe-down style dancing and the closest thing you
get to a memorable (you're not really going to count the number where they just
lurched back and forth on that fake trolley are you?) song and dance number is
when Esther and Tootie team up with hats and canes to do some kind of cake walk
(is that like that baby elephant walk thing?). The story is just too thin to
support this movie for almost two hours. I know that these slice of life
movies tend to be episodic (read: meandering), but things of some interest need
to occur regularly. Nothing much really happened to this family that I felt
like I needed to see. The movie feels aimless, a tribute to its refusal to
focus on Esther and her beau more than tangentially (like when it was necessary
for Tootie's story line) and Rose was fairly unlikeable in her clueless
self-absorption. The whole thing seemed to be a product of the St. Louis
Area Chamber of Commerce rather than an actual motion picture. Garland is
a pro and can sing and has a luminous presence, but the material she has
here is over-rated, over-ripe, gooey Americana that turns you off more than
makes you nostalgic with its absurdist perfectionistic view of life at the
turn of the century. How could you be nostalgic for something so patently
fake?
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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