In the decade following his triumphal comeback in 1948's Easter Parade, Fred Astaire played a succession of slight variations on essentially the same character: a lifelong bachelor and a successful Broadway hoofer putting on a show, who finds time for romance with a woman half his age. Here, he and Jane Powell play a brother-sister song and dance act who separately find romance while on tour in London. The parallel romantic story lines are pretty tame and familiar stuff, and anyway, this sort of movie flies or fails on its musical numbers and this movie has a few famous ones. Fred does an elaborate dance number using a hat rack for a partner when his sister fails to show up for a shipboard rehearsal; the two dance on a rocking ship to comedic effect in a parallel to an actual event in Astaire's life; and Astaire dances on the walls and ceiling of his hotel room in the most famous number in the movie. The latter was a technical marvel at the time, requiring the cameras and crew to be bolted to a rotating frame which moved with the room as it rotated, giving the illusion that the room and camera were standing still on the ground as Astaire went up the walls and across the ceiling! A few of the stage numbers are pretty good, too, although the film loses momentum when the dancing stops. Jane Powell holds her own alongside Astaire in their numbers together, although be warned: her song numbers come from the Jeanette MacDonald school of film vocals and can leave your ears ringing from their shrillness. Enjoy the production numbers and don't expect much in between and you will not be disappointed.
Review of Royal Wedding
