Saturday, August 25, 2007

Movie review - "Neptune's Darling" (1949) ***

Bright, sunny and colourful like a glass of cool lemonade on a hot day, made by a studio, MGM, who were totally comfortable with this sort of film. Hollywood often gets pigeon holed as this bastion of Anglo values but MGM made a strong push to turn Ricardo Montalban into a star, or at least a name (they did, too, with Fernando Lamas) - he's the romantic lead to Esther Williams, while the wacky comic duties are handled by Red Skelton and Betty Garrett.

The plot involves a misunderstanding that Skelton is Montalban and vice versa, much of which is contrived and easily resolved at the end, but serves to keep things frothing along in between comic set pieces, musical numbers and pool scenes. There is one stand out moment: a performance of "Baby It's Cold Outside" - even though Montalban and Williams weren't the best singers or dancers in the world, they are fine, and the song is so brilliantly suited to a musical and well choreographed, etc, it works an absolute treat.

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