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 The story of two "talented pals" who are after the same girl. Bing Crosby
plays the singer and Fred Astaire plays the dancer (that makes sense). The girl
dumps them both and so Crosby decides to run an inn that's open only on
holidays. The back of the box calls it a "tavern" for some reason. The box
notes that this is the film where we all first heard the song, "White
Christmas" by Irving Berlin. It also brags that the song won the Oscar back in
1942. Quick, name the other nominees! 1942, 101 minutes, DVD
The first thing you notice about this DVD is that this marks the return of the
double feature. You see, when you buy Holiday Inn you are actually buying both Holiday Inn and Going My Way , the Bing Crosby priest drama that won best picture back in 1944. Both films
are packed on a single dual layer DVD. When you put the DVD in, you are asked
which film you want to watch. One hopes that Universal and other studios do
this more often. Two classic movies for the price of one is a pretty sweet
deal. The retail price on this is $29.95 but I got it online for $20.99 with
free shipping.
Bing Crosby plays Jim, a singer and Fred Astaire is Ted, a dancer. This
picture is really Crosby's as it focuses on Ted first stealing their female
partner from him and then details Crosby's efforts to get his second girl back
from Ted and the allure of Hollywood. At the beginning Crosby and Astaire are a
song and dance team with a female partner. Crosby is set on marrying Lila, but
she is not so secretly in love with Astaire. So she dumps Crosby for Astaire
and Bing decides that show biz isn't the life for him. He has a brainstorm to
retire to a farm up in Connecticut and open an Inn that will only be open on
holidays (that's why it's called Holiday Inn and yes that's where the hotel
chain got its name). I gave Bing some cool points for this because he figured
that this meant he would only have to work 15 days a year and could be lazy the
rest of the time. As he left his partners in New York for the easy life, he was
singing about how great it was being lazy.  So Bing is up at the Holiday Inn and somehow this new girl shows up and
they like each other and she can sing and dance and soon she's his partner in
the little holiday shows that they put on at the Inn. Well, back in New York,
Lila dumps Astaire and Fred moseys on up to the Holiday Inn to see if Bing has
a new broad to steal. He does! Astaire and his manager see the new girl and
decide she's just the thing to replace Lila. Bing tries to prevent it but she
eventually goes with Astaire to Hollywood to film the feature version of
Crosby's Holiday Inn. So I guess this is a movie about a guy who runs the
Holiday Inn and then they make a movie about that. Bing pouts for awhile until
Mamie, the stereotyped fat black maid gives him a pep talk about how he has to
go after the woman he loves instead of moping around. Mamie's smarter than all
the white people in this film so Bing goes out to Hollywood and gets his dame
back.  Okay, the first thing you need to know is that this is a gimmick film. Irving
Berlin apparently came up with this idea of writing a song for every holiday
and then working it into some kind of movie. Well, this is that movie.
This isn't necessarily a bad idea, but you sort of glaze over when Lincoln's
birthday rolls around. At least you do until Crosby and his girl come out in
blackface. Yes, they do the big production number about Lincoln freeing the
slaves in blackface. As I winced, they even had Mamie sing a few lines about
how Lincoln "freed the darkie." I kept wondering when Ten Danson was going to
appear. Now to be fair to Bing, he only did the number in blackface because he
was trying to hide the identity of his girlfriend from Astaire, but you have to
wonder if maybe there was some other way to do it, like dressing her up like a
cripple or something. But I guess it was 1942, so whatever. Even worse was the
song and dance number about Washington's birthday. I wished that was offensive
instead of merely being stilted and dull and completely forced. Like I said,
some holidays just don't lend themselves to song, even if written by Irving
Berlin.  I know the traditionalists out there are going to gulp when I say this but I
think that
White Christmas was a more enjoyable movie than this one. That was a loose remake of this
flick that Crosby did several years later. The problem with Holiday Inn is that it seems to meander in the middle and the structure is disjointed
because it is shackled to its "each song for each holiday" format. Not to
mention
that Crosby seems like a dingus for putting up with Astaire stealing two of his
women. And what is it with Astaire that the only women who can sing and dance
are hooked up with Crosby so that he has to take them? Are there only two women
in the world he can dance with? That said, Astaire and Crosby work well
together, though you'd think someone would at least look cross once in awhile
when their best friend is stealing his woman. I guess people were gentlemen
back then. One area though that White Christmas can't touch is the dancing. Now, I'm no dancing guy or anything, but this
movie really comes alive whenever Astaire dances. In particular, the set pieces
where Astaire is drunk and dancing at the Inn and when he is doing the
Independence Day number where he's setting off firecrackers as he dances. You
just sit and wonder how much time and effort went into getting all those moves
perfected. The notes included on the disc indicated that Astaire went down to
128
pounds during this film because he was working so hard on the dance numbers and
the effort shows up on screen. This guy's body moves as an entire unit and even
drunk (which to achieve a degree of realism, he sort of was) he glides around
the floor effortlessly. The DVD packs in some pretty good extras (aside from the extra movie)
including a theatrical trailer and production notes. The notes indicate that
Astaire met future cohort Gene Kelly for the first time on the set of this
movie. You also get bios of the stars and filmmakers and learn about the
troubles they had casting the female lead among other things. All in all, some
of the songs date badly and the movie has a soggy middle, but Astaire dances up
a storm and Crosby maintains a positive attitude throughout (though he mopes
around
for about 25 seconds toward the end of the movie before Mamie kicks him in the
ass). This should make the kids sleepy on Christmas Eve.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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