I tried to think of all the film's flaws...

Rating: Null/10 (24 March 2002)

and came up with:
1. Don Lockwood and Cosmo Brown are supposed to be about the same age, judging by their childhood flashbacks, but as adults Don looks significantly older (Gene Kelly being thirteen years the senior of Donald O'Connor).
2. When Don leaps from a streetcar into Kathy Selden's convertible, she doesn't recognize him, which is odd considering that she later confesses to having seen a ton of his pictures (implying she's a big closet fan). Maybe they'd planned for the makeup crew to muss him up and then forgot about it.
3. I wish that the weakest song in the film ("Make 'Em Laugh", Arthur Freed's quick knock-off of Cole Porter's "Be A Clown") didn't accompany what is probably the best dance routine in the film.
4. The woman doing Kathy Selden's singing for "Would You?" (Betty Noyes) doesn't sound anything like Debbie Reynolds.
5. Events in the picture are a little condensed in relation to the real-life birth of the sound era. It's unlikely that a 1927 film like "The Dueling Cavalier" would have been hastily remade into a talkie.

(I thought about including points like "a few of Don Lockwood's spiffy outfits are really ugly" and "that head-of-the-studio guy is sometimes annoying" but then decided that these things, which were no doubt intentional, added to the charm.)
And I couldn't think of anything else. The fact that such minor nitpicking was all I could come up with in the movie's disfavor should give an idea of how good it is--as almost all the other reviews here confirm. (Yes, I know some folks think the "Broadway Rhythm" sequence is as long and unwieldy as Cyd Charisse's scarf and that "You Were Meant For Me" is a little poky, but I wouldn't change either of them. I doubt most people would, when you get right down to it.)