Right from the beginning, the movie demonstrates how desirous it is for our sports heroes to not be forced into off season employment when we meet up with Gene Kelly and Old Blue Eyes as they perform their vaudeville routine that revolves around a lot of singing and dancing to the title song.

The offseason should be dedicated to hitting the weight room and getting stabbed outside strip clubs, not going on tour with dancing bears and circus strongmen. I mean, that’s just humiliating. How am I supposed to be worshipping someone for hitting homers when they’re out doing soft shoe at some run down resort in the Catskills?

Kelly plays the shortstop on the champion Wolves, while Sinatra is the second baseman. There is also a first baseman named Goldberg, but they only trot him out for stuff like the embarrassing dance number they do at dinner in front of the whole team about their double play combination.

Spring training finds our boys off the dinner theater circuit and down in Florida gearing up for another run at the pennant with the Wolves. After a decent song and dance number where the two regale their teammates with all the women they’ve run into over the course of the off-season, the team gets some startling news. They’ve been inherited or sold or lost in a poker game or something to some person named K.C. Higgins!

The team immediately begins to speculate about what a know-nothing loser this guy must be while the audience immediately begins speculating about how it must be Esther Williams and that the hijinks are only a train ride away!

Once Esther reveals her true identity as well as her expected personality (cool with a surprising knowledge of baseball) and Frank falls in love with her because of how she fielded a grounder, you begin wishing for the Wolves to be quickly eliminated from playoff contention so that all of us can get back to our off season jobs.

After a rather pointless scheme that saw Kelly trying to use Frank’s interest in Esther to get around their curfew (it didn’t work – Esther’s the kind of girl after all who goes swimming with a cap on!), the season finally begins wherein nothing much happens other than a montage of wins for the Wolves. They look just as good as they did last year and are poised for another pennant winning season.

So just how is it that the gambler, Joe Lorgan, is going to ensure that his bet against the Wolves pays off? It’s a simple plan really. He knows that Kelly is the best player the team has, so he offers him a job singing and dancing at this new club he’s starting and at twice the pay of his current baseball salary!

The money is certainly attractive to Kelly, but he’s not about to quit on his team in the middle of a pennant race. Lorgan agrees to let Kelly have the job as long as he’ll practice at night after he’s done playing that day’s game. Kelly agrees, little realizing that Lorgan’s sinister to plot is to have Kelly so tired that he’ll make a lot of errors and single-handedly cost the Wolves the pennant!

I’m not entirely sure if this actually qualifies as a plot by a gambler to influence the outcome of a season. First of all, how is that no one in management notices that this guy is always gone? There was a passing reference to Frank “covering” for him, but I think hiding the fact that the biggest star in baseball has a second job working for a gambler’s new nightclub goes a little bit beyond mere “covering.”

Second, and most importantly, has anyone ever watched an entire baseball game? Have you ever noticed how little physical activity it involves when you aren’t the pitcher or the catcher? How many times is Kelly going to have even move during a game? I would think that the game would be a good time for him to get his wind back for the nightclub practice later that night.

And third, isn’t it really optimistic to think that one guy on a team who is sort of tired is going to screw things up so badly that his whole team’s season is going to collapse? I thought the whole point of a gambler fixing things is that they were fixed into a sure thing. Doesn’t anyone stop to consider that if Kelly quits, he can just go to the cops if the gamblers get rough on him? After all, he did nothing wrong.

The weak story combined with the weak production numbers combine to make this the cinematic equivalent of a ground ball rolling under Bill Buckner’s glove into the outfield. With legendary musical guru Busby Berkeley directing and with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra starring, you would expect at the very least, some astounding dance sequences, but none of them are particularly eye catching or choreographed in any memorable fashion.

In a movie with this pedigree, you could probably excuse (or even expect) a flimsy story since it should all be just an excuse to showcase everyone’s song and dance talents, but outside of the initial “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” number, nothing close to rousing occurs. Major league talent produces strictly minor league results.

© 2010 MonsterHunter

You do get to hear “Old Man River” sung twice by William Warfield and with lyrics about how he’s “tired of living” and “scared of dying” you wonder how it slipped in amongst all the junior high love warblings in the movie. Luckily with the advent of DVD, you can just skip to Chapters 12 and 28 to hear it and avoid the rest of this river rat.

After the set up where the Cotton Blossom river boat lands in some jerkwater town and we get introduced to everyone, it becomes clear why the movie takes every opportunity it can to have the stars get the goofy glazed-over look in their eye that signifies they’re about to open their heart (and unfortunately their mouth as well) and let pour forth all their feelings in mangled verse – there’s barely any story here.

Sure, Show Boat was smart enough to go with boy meets girl, boy loses girl when she gets fed up with his gambling addiction, boy gets girl back, but that’s really about as far as it goes. Beyond this bare minimum of plot, there isn’t any further effort to develop it.

Magnolia (Kathryn Grayson) is the daughter of the river boat owner and she falls for Gaylord Ravenal a river dandy with a love for ladies and a lust for cards.

When Nolie (as she’s referred to in the film) meets him, he’s just come up busted and is looking for a lift to New Orleans. In addition to being a compulsive gambler, he’s also an aspiring song and dance man, so he thought he might be able to hitch on with the river boat troupe. Alas, there aren’t any parts open so that seemingly puts the kibosh on his romance with Nolie.

As luck would have it though, the main act (Ava Gardener and some guy who disappears one third of the way through the movie) gets busted for miscegenation and as you know the show must go on (and in this case it goes on and on and on), so Gaylord gets hired and he and Nolie become the featured attraction.

Much to the dismay of Nolie’s mother (professional battle axe Agnes Moorehead), Nolie marries Gaylord and they live happily ever after. At least until Lady Luck kicks Gay out on his streaky ass.

Nolie’s anger at Gay’s gambling problem might be a bit more convincing if we just hadn’t seen a montage of her happily living the high life while he was winning big. You weren’t exactly dialing 1-800-BETS-OFF on Christmas when he was giving you fancy jewelry, were you Nolie?

As a professional river gambler myself, you expect your luck to run out on you once in awhile, but your old lady? Does a plumber’s wife leave him when he goes through a patch where no one’s toilet is clogged? Besides, we all know that compulsive gambling is a disease, especially when you keep losing.

Another thing I didn’t really get about this movie was that most of it didn’t even take place on the show boat! Once Gay and Nolie get married, they move to Chicago (for Gay’s gambling job I imagine) and the next thing you know they’re running into some of their old mates from the ship and these folks are performing at some hotel. How’s that river boat going to make any money if the only attraction is Endora?

And what ever happened to Ava Gardner? She only turns up in time to get Nolie a job and to help Gay reunite with Nolie and the daughter he never knew he had. And it was never explained what happened to her boyfriend.

She did seem to have picked up an alcohol problem though which combined with Gay’s gambling problem at least upped the melodrama enough that there were a few scenes that elicited chuckles, but if you’re wanting that, you could do better with a Susan Hayward or Joan Crawford movie.

Everything is wrapped up in wholly unconvincing fashion without the need for anyone to actually sort out their problems. Compulsive gambler? Who cares as long as you’re back on board the Cotton Blossom. Alcoholic? Sure, but look at how happy she looks as she watches the happy ending take place on the show boat! Abandoned your wife and never met your six year old kid until today? Welcome back, baby!

Obviously, all this whitewashing could be forgiven if this musical had been, well, more musical. If I’m tapping my foot and nodding my head along to some kicky beats and fresh routines, then I’m not sweating the problems that were important enough to be relied to supply the drama, but were unimportant enough to let get in the way of a happy ending.

Colorful costumes, Ava Gardener, and Howard Keel’s likable rogue (sure he’s a scummy gambler who ran out on his family, but he complains of “untidy conduct” when he sees Ava getting slapped around by some punk, then punches his lights out!) can’t make up for stultifying songs and just as stultifying writing. Like Old Man River, it’s best to keep rolling along and right on past this un-pleasure cruise.

© 2010 MonsterHunter

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.

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.

Esther is hung up on John Truitt, a generic dude that lives next door and that she pines after for no good reason. 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, throwing flour in the face of mean neighbors and derailing trolley cars.

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.

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 laid 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.

The real drama occurs when daddy Smith comes home one night and announces that he has just gotten a kick ass lawyering job in New York City!<>

Everyone else in the family looks at him like he cut a smelly Kansas City fart! Immediately 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 Freaking Fair!

Naturally, this causes Tootie to suffer a complete emotional breakdown. It all happens when she gets sad around Christmas time about leaving St. Louis. 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 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 everyone creams their pantaloons over the gaudy lights that adorn the exhibit halls.

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.

There’s some rather bland hoe-down style dancing and the closest thing you get to a memorable song and dance number is when Esther and Tootie team up with hats and canes to do some kind of cake walk. (You’re not really going to count the number where they just lurched back and forth on that fake trolley are you?)

The story is just too thin to support this film for almost two hours. 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.

Garland is a pro, but the material she has here is over-rated, over-ripe, gooey Americana that turns you off more than makes you nostalgic with its absurdly unrealistic view of life at the beginning of the 20th Century. It felt like it was more a product of the St. Louis Area Chamber of Commerce rather than an actual motion picture.

© 2010 MonsterHunter

While society would no doubt cast aspersions on us common folk if we pursued such a course of conduct, it’s really the only way the incredibly wealthy can assure themselves that they’re getting a gal full of life and untainted by all the gold digging that goes on with the ladies in their social strata who are eighteen years old and up. Besides, as shown in this movie, it really isn’t that much of a stretch to buy some child-bride a bunch of jewels when you’ve already spent much of her adolescence plying her with caramels and trips to the sea shore. May as well make it legal. Or at least as legal as it’s ever going to be.

Lest you think that your own narrow-minded morals will prevent you from enjoying this celebration of pedophilia, you should know that director Vincente Minnelli presents it all with a lush veneer of color and good cheer so even though you’re inclined to be grossed out when Gaston threatens to spank Gigi for some childish smart mouthing, you can tune out this dirty old man and just enjoy the French scenery.

Oh, and you had to know that this all went down in France. The France in this movie is a France where every rich guy around is squiring a different girlfriend just about every week, so it makes sense that at some point the male population would have to work their way down to fourteen year olds. Now, to be fair to the film, I don’t believe that it ever specifies how old Gigi is supposed to be, but we first meet her in the park running around giggling with her schoolmates. Here’s a tip for the French: that’s called recess.

It was those opening scenes in the park when I first began to get an inkling that something was up with this movie. Having read the back of the DVD, I had the impression that this was one of those love stories where some uncouth tomboy was going to win the heart of a rich guy by learning how to walk the catwalk in sexy high heels like all real women do. Of course by the end of things, she would realize that you just have to be yourself and your rich boyfriend would still love you. (As long as you still had your hot makeover!)

I didn’t know that the “girlish gawkishness” referred to on the DVD was to be taken literally! In any case, Maurice Chevalier (as the old dog Honore Lachaille) talks about how he likes to collect beautiful things, but not antiques and the next thing I know, he’s eyeing Gigi and her schoolgirl friends and singing “Thank Heaven For Little Girls!” Shoot, thank heaven for child sex offender registries, Honore!

This movie has class though and so it is that the elderly Honore isn’t the one who is going to be romancing Gigi. That duty falls to his nephew, Gaston. Gaston hangs out with Honore, debating their different approaches to life in between parties and luncheons. Whereas Honore finds everything about their glamorous lifestyle to be exciting, Gaston is bored by it all.

Why, he would rather just go over to Gigi’s house and play cards with her (even though she’s a bad girl and cheats all the time!) and have dinner with her grandma. Gaston doesn’t realize it yet, but those evenings of playing with her My Little Pony collection and doing Shrinky Dinks with her are going to lead him out of his rich malaise!

The movie follows both Gaston and Gigi as they navigate their respective roles in French high society. Gaston has to contend with his current girlfriend who cheats on him with her ice skating instructor. Plenty of funny scenes with Honore advising Gaston on what course of action to take with an eye towards saving face follow and when Gaston’s ex-girlfriend pretends to commit suicide (her own way of saving face) Honore and Honore’s butler congratulate Gaston on his first suicide!

Honore immediately suggests that Gaston make the rounds in Paris all week long so that everyone will know he’s unaffected by this. For her part, Gigi is getting lessons on how to be a proper young lady from her grandmother’s sister and this involves the usual sorts of things like how to eat fancy little birds, how to pour coffee and how to sit in chairs (you don’t simply sit, you “insinuate” into the chair).

After a trip to the seaside with Gigi, Gaston realizes that he’s in love with her. He’s conflicted about this because, you know, she’s a freaking kid, and he tries to reconcile his feelings about her in a nice scene that has him strolling around a park singing about how on the one hand she’s really hot, but on the other hand she still likes to play with Lite Brite.

There are times during the movie when Gigi (Leslie Caron) doesn’t look like a kid at all, but more like the 27 years that Leslie really was when she made the movie, but there are also plenty of icky moments when she’s pouting or whatever when she seems every bit the underage piece of jail bait she’s supposed to be playing. How Leslie didn’t get one of the nine Oscars this thing snagged back in 1958, I’ll never know.

In spite of its questionable premise, the movie is a funny look at the empty lifestyles of the rich and famous and Caron is certainly a winning presence. For the most part, the songs are fine and actually are used to move the story along instead of stopping the movie in its tracks just so a big production number can be inserted. You should have a good time watching this movie as long you pretend that Gigi is at least eighteen. (Folks on probation for sex offenses should consult their probation officers as to whether viewing this constitutes a probation violation.)

© 2009 MonsterHunter