About as Good as They Come.

Rating: 10/10 (29 July 2005)

A lot of people seem to gush over this picture -- "It's my favorite musical," said one critic, and Kelly replied, "That's good to know." Well, it's hard to believe in lists of best or worst things because everything is made up of several dimensions. Some are good and some are bad. Sometimes very bad. Nobody would argue that Hitler was a nice guy but he DID love his dog, Blondi.
However, I have to agree that within the limits of the genre this is probably the most satisfying musical I've ever seen. There is not a single musical number that is a dud. Kelly and Donen avoid Kelly's usual repetitive steps and he really stretches out on this one. There is about a one minute sequence in the "Broadway Rhythm" finale just after Kelly sings "Gotta Dance" from his knees that is given over to his solo. His dance is full of balletic leaps and jagged edges. It's a moment on unequaled exhilaration. He seems at time suspended by wires.
I'll skip over the contributions of Cyd Charrise -- my God, those LEGS, like a more than usually sinewy giraffe -- and Donald O'Connor. You cannot NOT laugh at O'Connor's number, "Make 'Em Laugh." Even after several viewings.
The most charming (and best-known) number is Kelly's "Singin' in the Rain," but it's not the most technically accomplished. I'd give that honor to "Moses Supposes." The whole movie is of course as corny as they come, although it probably didn't seem so in 1952 when it was released. There's nothing pretentious about it. Kelly had an unfortunate tendency to step out of his class with films like "Invitation to the Dance," and to be involved in musicals with dramatic underpinnings like the overblown "American in Paris." The thing about this MGM musical -- and a few others like "On The Town" and "The Bandwagon" is that they were funny as hell IN BETWEEN the musical numbers. Nobody could ever criticize Astaire's dancing. He was great, a much better dancer than Kelly in many ways, but his 1930s musicals with Ginger Rogers were appealing mainly because of their musical numbers. Betty Comden and Adolph Green in the 1940s added stories that could stand on their own as a comedies.
There's something about singing as opposed to dancing too. Anybody can sing -- however lousily. You can sing. I can sing. My pet canary sings. Not well, but we all can do it. But dancing is a skill of a different order and to do it well we need the attention of Terpsichore. All those steps that seem so effortlessly improvised on screen (the taps are always dubbed in later) must be memorized one by one by the performers. Tap? Okay -- heel or toe? Thirty seconds of unedited dancing on screen represents about 100 hours of memorization and practice. Not to mention that you have to be in as good a physical shape as a running back.
"Singin' in the Rain" is a perfect example of how a nearly perfect musical should be made. Okay, Debbie Reynolds isn't much of a dancer and she can't sing well, but so what? The overall impact of the movie is so warm and fuzzy that it doesn't matter. It's like nibbling some kind of tiny and exquisite pastry, not a big deal, but the equal of any experience.