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7 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Given short shrift in the pantheon of MGM musicals, this is one of the best..., 26 January 2003
10/10
Author: sdiner82 (sdiner82@aol.com) from New York City, USA

Delightful follow-up to "Singing in the Rain" (minus Gene Kelly, which is fine with me), "I Love Melvin" is a snappy(76 minutes), tuneful Technicolored treat with one show-stopping musical number after another. A serviceable plot (Donald O'Connor plays a free-lance photographer who becomes so enamored with aspiring singer/dancer Debbie Reynolds that he promises he'll get her the cover of Look Magazine) provides a nifty frame for a series of first-rate, beautifully choreographed musical numbers that make one wonder why this terrific little MGM gem has been overlooked. The music is sensational (thank you, Joseph Myrow), the evocation of the Manhattan setting is a visual delight (MGM actually went on location for a few scenes--watching Ms. Reynolds walk across Central Park South is a time-capsule come to life.) And O'Connor and Ms. Reynolds have probably tbe best displays of their singing & dancing talents in their entire careers (their frenetic "Where Did You Learn to Dance?" is a knockout; O'Connor's solo "I Want to Wander" is a classic; and Debbie's opening dream number, "The Lady Loves," wherein she is attired in slithering pink as she delivers the sultry lyrics, hint at the dreamy sexiness she was allowed to exude in future films.) MGM produced so many classic musicals in the early 1950s that "I Love Melvin" has been unjustly neglected. Too bad, because it's a sparkling, melodious, toe-tapping treat that ranks among MGM's finest and is long-overdue for the accolades it deserves.

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5 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
How sad that the 'age of the movie musicals' has been allowed to fade into the sunset., 21 April 2004
10/10
Author: MaryAnn Dumond (MADUMOND) from Bristol, Ct.

I was eleven years old when I saw "I Love Melvin" and, immediately, fell in love with Donald O'Connor. He was teamed with Debbie Reynolds and I was sooooo jealous of her. It was my dream to become a dancer/singer/actor when I 'grew up'. But, for then, I lived for those visits to the local theatre where I could fill my soul with the glitz, glamour and wonder of it all. At that time, I had no way of knowing that this wonderful genre would, over the years, fade away from absolute glory to the dusty archives of today. Thank God for these websites, where we surviving lovers can rekindle those old flames by buying or renting our favorites. How comforting to know the actors will be forever young, in our eyes; and, in our hearts, so will we.

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4 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
A real surprise package., 8 September 1999
Author: David Atfield (bits@alphalink.com.au) from Canberra, Australia

This film is an absolute delight from the pre-credit sequence where Debbie Reynolds writes the title of the film in lipstick on a mirror to the hilarious chase through Central Park at the end. In between Debbie dreams of becoming a Hollywood star in some magnificently staged dream sequences, thanks to the genius of Cedric Gibbons, in one of which she meets Robert Taylor as Robert Taylor! In another sequence she dances with three dancers in Fred Astaire masks and three in Gene Kelly masks - before winning an Oscar! Great stuff.

Debbie is perfect as both great movie star and girl next door. Her Broadway performance as a football is a riot. Equally good is Donald O'Connor as her lover and aspiring photographer. His roller-skate sequence is brilliant, as is a dance sequence in which he travels the world and plays numerous characters (again thanks to Gibbons). There is great support from Allyn Joslyn, as Debbie's exasperated father, and from Jim Backus as a crabby photographer. And the little girl has a good song too.

The score is jazzy and upbeat, and it's great to see the real Central Park and other New York locations, shot in gorgeous technicolor. I think this terrific musical is very under-rated.

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4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
But I love Melbourne..., 26 March 2004
7/10
Author: ptb-8 from Australia

When I used to show this hilarious musical in the late 70s (and with a new print too!) I often ran it with another funny 1953 musical GIVE A GIRL A BREAK which starred Bob Fosse and Debbie Reynolds. Customers phoning the cinema ALWAYS thought I said "Tonight we have...err...Give a Girl a Break..and .I Love Melbourne" which of course they all thought was my personal comment. The programme was such fun and it did sell a lot of tickets too! Both new prints looked so good on a movie screen! The alternative version of "The lady Loves" as the opening dance number in I LOVE MELVIN can be found in THATS ENTERTAINMENT PART 3. ....and suggest you find it .......I can see why it was changed....can you?.....I LOVE MELVIN is perfect small town (girl) MGM quality ....and must have been one of their last Technicolour filmed musicals....they made everything in ansco or metro color after 1953.

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
A Great 50's Musical - Talented Cast - Great Song-Writing!, 28 August 2000
10/10
Author: inclass (inclass@earthlink.net) from Pennsylvania

This movie really lets you know that back in the 50's, they really knew how to make an excellent musical! The cast includes Donald O'Connor as Melvin, a small-time photographer working for "Look" Magazine. He turns his attention and camera to Judy LeRoy, a beautiful dancer who dreams of making it big one day, played by Debbie Reynolds. The songs in this film are wonderfully written and performed, including a very charming outdoor song and dance routine performed by O'Connor and the film's youngest actress, 9 year old Noreen Corcoran, who brightens the many scenes she's in, playing Judy's sister, Clarabelle, who seems to like to be involved in everything. (The songs have very clever lyrics as well!) Melvin seeks to win the hand of Judy, but her usual date, Harry Black (Richard Anderson), who's pretty much a square, is about to pop the question to the delight of Judy's dad, while her dad dislikes Melvin. O'Connnor and Reynolds are brilliant. Jim Backus adds some laughs also. The whole cast comes together to make this a delightful film, which is yet another great one that was overlooked by video & DVD companies! A MUST SEE! Try your favorite movie channels.

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3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
Should be a classic!, 8 October 2002
10/10
Author: propchick from Florida

Donald O'Connor should be revered as the musicals god he was (and still very probably could be). "I Love Melvin" should be considered a classic, right up with the rest of the musicals. I guess life really isn't fair, lol.

As cute as they come, and with Debbie Reynolds, to boot!

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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
slight fun for Donald and Debbie, 8 October 2003
Author: didi-5 from United Kingdom

Undemanding but energetic fare from MGM teaming the vivacious Debbie Reynolds as the day-dreaming dancing football and the late Donald O'Connor as the goofy magazine gopher who wants to put her on the front cover. It's hardly "Singin' in the Rain" but it does have glorious Technicolor, a snappy dance number set in a park, and a memorable song in "The Lady Loves" (which doubles as a glamour showcase for Reynolds). Nice cameo from Robert Taylor too!

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2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Photo-Finish, 30 August 2007
8/10
Author: writers_reign from London, England

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

With a little better screenplay this would have been a musical to rival any turned out by MGM. Quickly re-teaming Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds after Singin' In The Rain and wisely jettisoning both Gene Kelly and Comden and Green the studio came up with a plot that fit where it touched then adorned it with some really great numbers by Josef Myrow and Mack Gordon which are light years fresher, wittier and more sophisticated than the stale Freed-Brown numbers in Singin' In The Rain, which veer more towards sentiment than style. The movie gets off to a flying start with the standout A Lady Loves which kills two birds with one stone by establishing Reynolds as a dreamer aspiring wistfully to a career in movies. Donald O'Connor never really attained the stardom which was the rightful due of his talent and charm and he displays both to full advantage here. If ever anything came under the heading 'forgotten gem' this one surely does.

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3 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
I saw Donald O'Connor dancing, in an unfamiliar movie...., 28 August 2002
Author: Anita de Acosta Keith (g_keith@sbcglobal.net) from Columbus, Ohio USA

I love tap dance, and Donald O'Connor is a Tap Master. When I saw him today, I was surfing to my favorite TCM, and wondered what movie this was. I looked at the channel guide, saw the name, and decided to watch. I remembered Debbie Reynolds' name associated with this movie, so I ended up watching. Debbie and Donald were really cute, as was Noreen Corcoran (Moochie's sister, of original Mickey Mouse Club).... Judy's mother's face I remember from Ginger Rogers movies. It was nice how first Melvin got rid of Judy's dumb suitor, first temporarily and later permanently. I enjoyed seeing Jim Backus. I also liked seeing Central Park from 1953; I visited NYC two weeks ago (almost one year after 9/11). At the end, I liked the search and run scene through the park, everyone looking for Melvin, and I was really surprised when he and Judy literally ran into each other (the whole thing was excellent choreography). I also liked when Debbie was being thrown around as the football, but I know that this was the subservient-50's when a female was stereotyped as an object - but a job's a job, ya know? The movie was a delightful romp. Judy's father was funny. Changing his name because he thought his daughter was going to be a big star. I saw Barbara Ruick in the closing credits, I think she was in "Carousel". I hope to see more Donald O'Connor dancing movies. Too bad he has all that fame for "Francis, the Talking Mule." I am a tap dancer. Let's hear it for the hoofers!

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1 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Fantasy and artifice as weapons against repressive reality (possibly spoilers), 14 September 2000
6/10
Author: Alice Liddel (-darragh@excite.com) from dublin, ireland

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

It is a commonplace that the 1950s was the Golden Age of the Hollywood musical, especially the MGM model. This not only means a profusion of classics such as 'An American in Paris', 'Singin' in the Rain', 'the Band Wagon' and 'Gigi', but also a string of second-order films of exceptional quality. 'I love Melvin' is one of these. Compared to the first films I mentioned, it is definitely an inferior product - Don Weis has neither the visual flourish or emotional realism of a Minnelli or a Donen; the stars, Donald O'Conner and Debbie Reynolds, pleasant verging on irritating, are not of the first rank, and seem exposed without their most-famous co-star, Gene Kelly, while the supporting cast is generally unmemorable; the songs are mediocre and the choreography routine; the sets are clever and pretty, but do not reveal any great truths about characters' feelings. I mention all this to show the difference between a great MGM musical and a good one. 'Melvin' is a good musical, but a very entertaining film, especially in the era of Kazan and 'Marty'.

'Melvin' boasts two knockout numbers (well, three, but the amazing football dance is more clever than exhilirating). The film opens with a beautiful film-within-a-film sequence, as a crew wait for Julie LeRoy to perform her musical number. This is basically a sexless variation on 'Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend', but the gorgeous bright colours, Debbie's flaming dress against a cool yellow background, and inventive-within-its-limits choreography, are lovely.

The second elaborate sequence involves Melvin mooning about an empty photographers' set, also yellow, surreptitiously sticking up pictures of Judy in the hope that she'll be noticed and put on the cover. He goes through a variety of routines and costume changes which reveal the transfigurative effect his love for Julie has on him. The set is beautiful to look at, but vacuous in emotional terms; Weis' direction is too grounded, his camera movements laboriously signalled, rather than the urges of an overspilling heart; O'Conner's personality has become considerably less charming since 'Make 'Em Laugh', but it's all good stuff.

These two numbers are crucially connected in that they are both fantasy sequences, dreamed by characters with huge ambitions, but hemmed in by economic circumstances. This treatment of the working class is rare in the Hollywood musical, rare in that, unlike 'West Side Story', class isn't a suffocating trauma, but a very real barrier to prosperity and happiness. Judy's change of name from Schneider to leRoy maybe simply a desire for the exotic, but also suggests a reaction to an anti-Semitism very prominent in the American society of the 1950s.

it would be stretching things to compare 'Melvin' to a full-blown critique of the family and conformist AMerica such as 'Bigger than life' or 'Written on the wind', but the film doesn't shy away from tensions, such as the generational gap between a mother who meekly serves her husband, and a daughter determined to earn a career for herself; or an employment situation where workers are expected to take any old rubbish from their employers (plus ca change...). It is significant that Melvin should have no family background - this freedom is surely part of his attraction for Judy. They are connected by a different bond, the symmetry of the plot and mise-en-scene, which is continually playing them off one another, always reuniting them, like lines of a triangle.

This structural artifice complicates an apparently simple dichotomy between authenticity/nature and capitalism/consumerism/fakery - Judy and Melvin meet in a park and eventually reunite there; their love is endangered by Melvin creating a fake magazine for her. His job as a photographers' assistant, his taking 'thousands' of pictures of Judy, his pretending to be someone else, create a world where identity is unstable, perhaps a riposte to a society where everybody is expected to be the same. At any rate, that park is pure artifice, the yellow and green of the hedge matched by the dresses of its users. In such a world fantasy (and the whole climax is possibly Judy's concussed delusion) is the only suppository for individuality and imagination.

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