Hunt2546 Review of It's Always Fair Weather

It's Always Fair Weather (1955)

A spoonful of medicine doesn't make the sugar go down

[6/10 · 4 July 2012]

I can just see the story conference where Gene and Stan say to Mr. Mayer, "Gee, L.B., you'll love it. An hour and a half on lacerating male self-hatred, in which three ex GIs, ten years into the rest of their lives, decide they really suck big time and finally come to accept their utter mediocrity!" But that's exactly what this very odd duck of a picture is up to, and it's not helped by gratuitous forays--certainly inconsistent with the overall theme of the work--into parody with TV, advertising, Dinah Shore and Dr. Joyce Brothers among its disparate and incoherent targets. So it doesn't amount to much beyond an interesting failure but it has a few good numbers, notably the famous "trash can dance" by Kelly, Daily and Kidd and a number in a boxing gym where Cyd Charisse throws her 38-22-38 bones around in a tight sweater--and I mean TIGHT!--among a bunch of sweaty pugs. But there are plenty of disappointments. Why on earth is there no climactic Kelly-Charisse number? Who do we get so little of Michael Kidd. In fact, while these guys are quickly sketching in how bad their lives after the war suck- -one's a sellout, one's a small fry, one's a fraud--there's not enough dancing and there's way too much self pity. The ending is an overlong, overchoreographed and underwhelming fist fight sequence which reunites the spirit of the three ex soldiers who thought they'd do so much better and and settled for so much less. After the ebullience of "On the Town," this one is a real bitter pill to swallow.