Review of Shall We Dance (1937) by Emily R — 17 Jun 2004

Over my many years (ok, not too many) I have come to the conclusion that, if you are a musical fan, you are either a Gene Kelley man or a Fred Astaire man. I am definately a Fred Astaire man...wo-man. Unfortunately, my favorite musical is Singin' in the Rain staring Gene Kelley. But it's not Gene that makes the movie for me. It happens to strike my fancy because of his 'lil buddy, Cosmo, played by Donald O'Connor. I wuv him. He is man perfected. Adorable, hilarious, and has the best dance scene in all of musical history (i.e. "Make 'em Laugh"). Anyway, back to Fred.

So, I was in Video to Go sulking because Jeff's out with the boys when I realized that the perfect cure is to have Fred Astaire sing love songs to...Ginger Rogers, apparently. I've seen this movie before and it is just ok. I love just to watch Fred dance around. There are sooooo many opportunities. The storyline goes like this:

Fred Astaire plays "Petrov" a famous Russian ballet dancer who happens to practice jazzy tap-dance in his spare time. He meets the famous dancer "Linda Keene" (Ginger Rogers) in Paris and schemes his way into meeting her on a boat back to New York. In the meantime rumor starts that the two are married and may even be pregnant. Basically the rest is confusing. No one knows whether or not the two are married. Back and forth, back and forth. Of course, because of the nature of the genre, we all know that they'll eventually fall in love. We're just not sure when Linda will stop having hissy fits and leaving and throwing tantrums. Basically, I just don't think that Ginger Rogers is all that great. Her dancing is good, her voice (in this movie at least) is less than mediocre. She certainly is beautiful, though. I gave it an 8 because Fred definately makes up for everything in his charm. He's not as good looking as Gene Kelley, his voice is...unique, but he could dance Gene Kelley into the ground. And he wasn't in Xanadu.