On the Town

Day 260 - 9/17/09 - Movie #260

BEFORE: I've seen bits of this musical before, but not the whole thing, I think. Look, I've had a rough week with my "Tribute to New York City" - I've seen insider trading, terrorism, political scandal, robbery, mob violence, drug wars, and gangland riots. I need some "mental floss" - like a palate cleanser, something that shows the good, fun, musical side of NYC. A film that will remind me that "It's a wonderful town!"

THE PLOT: Three sailors on a day of shore leave in New York City look for fun and romance before their twenty-four hours are up.

AFTER: Yeah, I really needed that - I saw parts of this film back when I was a kid, before I spent 20+ years living in New York, so I had no emotional attachment. But now, that opening montage of NY was so beautiful that...no, you go on ahead, I've got something in my eye...
The film is cheezy and corny, but silly in a good way - reflecting a simpler time when men and women met cute and danced cheek to cheek.

Obviously most of this film was shot on sets, to accommodate the song and dance numbers (you can't actually dangle from the Empire State Building, or dance around the dinosaur statue in the Museum of Natural History...) And I won't even get into the impossibility of visiting Wall Street, the Cloisters and the Statue of Liberty in that order (bouncing between downtown and uptown),
or visiting every museum in Manhattan in one day (impossible) or tracking down one girl in a city of millions (very unlikely) Who cares? Well, I guess actually I do...and you sure can't leave a midtown club at 11:30 pm and get to Coney Island by midnight!

The film stars Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin plays "the guy who's not Gene Kelly or Frank Sinatra"... and their dates are played by Ann Miller and Betty Garrett (who you may recognize as Laverne & Shirley's landlord from 1970's sitcom TV)

On a whole, the movie's not exactly "Singin' in the Rain", but it's darn close.

My favorite lines:
"I know a little place on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge where we can hide out..."
"What's it called?"
"Brooklyn!"

RATING: 7 out of 10 mugs of beer