Year:  1960
Rating: 7.0

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It is nice from time to time just to sit down and wallow in an old-fashioned corny musical like this one. By 1960 when this was made the musical genre was really beginning to wilt but one of the great masters of the musical Vincent Minnelli gives this one a nice push. Still the glamour and intricate choreography from some of his classics like An American in Paris and Bandwagon are missing - that MGM age was just in the past. Neither Dean Martin or Judy Holliday would be considered great dancers - decent hoofers at most - and so the musical numbers have a very stripped down to earth feel about them. And even the songs - with a couple of exceptions - from Comden, Styne and Green do not feel up to much of their previous work.



But this is a highly enjoyable film with a clever amusing script - more comedy than musical and as much as I like Dean Martin, this film belongs to Judy Holliday in a truly bravura comic performance. She eats this film up - as changeable as the wind - one moment a force of nature or a soothing touch or in despair, there is barely a scene in which she is not in. Her film career had sort of hit a bumpy patch after her enormous success in Born Yesterday in 1950 when she was called up before the Un-American Activities Committee and labeled a subversive. She was not officially blacklisted but the roles lessened. This was a huge comeback for her but as it turned out it was her last film role and she was to die of cancer only a few years later. One of my favorite actresses though I have only seen her in a handful of films. She radiates.