Product: The Mickey Rooney & Judy Garland Collection (Babes in Arms / Babes on Broadway / Girl Crazy / Strike Up the Band) (2007)
Rating: 4.0
Great Package, Commentary, Not So Much
It's great to have the Mickey Rooney/ Judy Garland musicals finally on DVD in such pristine transfers. Judy and Mickey shine in glorious black and white. Could two people have any more talent, although some might say Mickey is a little "too talented" and could "be a bit much". He can wear me out ( or maybe down) with his manic energy,his impersonations, his dancing, his clowning and his tendency toward the maudlin. Judy, however. is as fresh and relevant as if the movies were made today. Because she was always so invested in her material and was such a gifted artist, whatever she's doing on screen feels real and urgent, thus never dated or wedded to a particlar period style. She pulses with authentic life.The package for the movies is great, particularly the book and the disc of extras which includes a compilation of musical numbers from Judy's films, a great bonus for Garland fans.I'm giving the box set 4 stars instead of 5 because of John Fricke's commentaries on Babes in Arms and Girl Crazy. Fricke has made a cottage industry of being a chronicler of Garland's career and rescuing her legacy from the biographers who have focused on the heartbreak and dysfunction of her life. Certainly hers was one of the great stories of show business and she was arguably, as Fricke dubs her in one of his bios of Garland, The World's Greatest Entertainer. Fricke is justly adoring of Garland and doesn't subsitute emotion for facts. However at times, one would almost think he is an MGM flack as he breathlessly recites the facts of Judy's career (facts that any fan would know my heart). There's never any critical stance or personal perspective just a glowing, hagiography of Garland and Rooney and too much rote info about the studio players and the films' creators. Although there are some interesting ( always laudatory) Rooney, Garland anecdotes, most of what he tells us could be found in any film encyclopedia.An absoulutely stunning segment occurs during his comments on the minstrel number in Babes in Arms. It's certainly safe to say that any modern audience who has never seen a black face number will be in for a rude shock. The racism is jaw dropping and needless to say, of its time. Fricke discusses it in the most matter of fact , mundane manner, never commenting on the degrading aspects of it or what happened to the number over the years it was shown on television or how Garland, a noted liberal, felt, in retrospect, about doing it . What impact did it have on black audiences at the time, did the NAACP have any comments, etc., etc. Instead of answering any of these questions, Fricke gives us biographies of Stephen Foster and Eddie Leonard(???)!!!! Is he kidding?? An egregious omission!!