Review of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) by Dayna L — 15 Sep 2009

If you have to watch this musical, watch the stage show, and that's only if you really, really must.

Adam (Howard Keel) wants to get a wife/slave to serve him and his hillbilly brothers, and manages to find an idiot (Milly - Jane Powell) who falls in love with him on sight, and is desperate to escape her life of drudgery. Then she finds out what a horrible life Adam has in store for her. For a moment she stands up for herself - she will be his slave, since she is trapped, but not his sex slave. Then she gives in and lets him take advantage of her anyway.

However, although she fails to make Adam like her at all, she manages to tame his hillbilly brothers and introduces them to the concept of love. Adam is disgusted with his new civilised brothers, and even more when he discovers they are in love, a concept he can't understand. So he convinces them that the best thing to do is kidnap the girls they like, and a priest, and force them to get married. So off they go, except they forget the priest.

Before they can rape their hostages, Milly steps in and throws the men out. Again disgusted, Adam leaves. Stuck in a house through the winter, it turns out the woman all really want to get it on with their kidnappers after all, so Milly might as well not have saved them, and by spring the men and women are all mixing. It is extremely lucky for the men that the women are all sluts, gagging to be kidnapped and raped by a bunch of weird hillbillies.

There isn't much of a set up and little plot, and what there is is about some men kidnapping some women, who again, very, very luckily really want to be kidnapped - phew - don'â??t have to worry about the morality here. If you can ignore the awful plot, which just couldn't be made these days unless it was a horror film, and focus on this as a musical instead - it is still tripe. There are no big or memorable numbers, all the songs are lame wet fishes, especially the opening song which really doesn't get you in the mood for fun, and Powell has a ghastly, screechy singing voice.

As for the ending, Milly never does stand up to her abusive husband who doesn't love her. Yeah, I feel happy.