Rating: 
Summary: One Word - Depressing!!!!!!!!
Review: This movie I think was just plain depressing! Just when you think something good and happy will happen, someone dies, people seperate, bones are broken, so on and so forth. This movie got alot of great reviews, and it was a fun movie, but for people who like complete happy endings, this film is not for you.
Rating: 
Summary: definetly a keeper
Review: This movie is a milestone in it's self. It's the first movie Gene Kelly made and the first movie Judy Garland played the part of a grown woman. When I saw this movie I was used to the plaisant Don Lockwood and Jerry Mulligan type of Kelly. But when he crushes his hand in his trunck to dodge the drafte in WW1, It was the first time I saw him in a caractere that might have a dark side. In this case, his obsession with getting to play the palace. It hit me like a tone "a" bricks. Judy Garland is wonderful in this dramatic/musical role. She did a pretty good job for a first timer, if you ask me. Even if she does look a little frail (SO skinny) during her number, she sounds amazing (duh). And tho she's not considered a dancer she keeps up with Kelly just fine. Apparently Gene was self-consious about singing with Judy and Judy was self-consious about dancing with Gene.They both did great jobs, in my opinion. The best number is doubtless the title number. One of the cutest things I've ever seen. The ending is somewhat predictable yet strangely satisfying. It's an alround great movie. The only reason I removed one star was because it shocked me so much the first time I saw it and Ben Blue's number is on of the most boring things I've seen in my life. But don't worry, Judy comes in wearing a really cute costume and saves the day. So get it! It's a must for any movie collector or Gene Kelly-Judy Garland fan.
Rating: 
Summary: Love, war, Garland, and Kelly make for a powerful musical
Review: Three years after she rocketed to superstardom in The Wizard of Oz, Little Judy Garland was all grown up and more than ready to assume her first truly adult leading role; for his part, Gene Kelly, having just wowed audiences on Broadway in Pal Joey, was ready to make his feature film debut. Garland and Kelly made a natural match, demonstrating great chemistry together from the very start. For Me and My Gal is just a wonderful film, featuring dancing, singing, romance, heartache, joy, pain, and just about every emotion under the sun, oftentimes swinging in mood at the drop of a hat from euphoria to misery. A nervous Gene Kelly credited Judy for pulling him through the production of this his first film, and in all truth Judy turns in an outstanding performance here. The movie, released in 1942, is in many ways tied to the contemporary war effort at home, and while it may be a definite product of its era, its themes and unforgettable performances make it a film that will live and be watched and certainly enjoyed forever. For Me and My Gal is also a tribute to the great vaudeville tradition, a tradition Judy Garland knew quite well first-hand from her childhood spent on the stage. Garland plays Jo Hayden, a vaudevillian singer/dancer working to pay for her brother's education. Teamed up with Jimmy Metcalf and his gang, she is successful enough but far removed from the dream of every vaudeville performer of playing The Palace. As the movie opens, she meets up with Harry Palmer (Gene Kelly), an entertainer so vain that Jo dislikes him immediately, even saying at one point, "I bet he takes a bow every time he hears a clap of thunder." Palmer wants nothing more than to get ahead, to get to The Palace, and he sees potential in the young Jo Hayden. When his initial business proposals to her go nowhere fast, he turns on the charm and, before you know it, they are singing and dancing beautifully together to the tune of For Me and My Gal. Jimmy Metcalf loves Jo, but he breaks up his own act in order to make Jo take Harry's offer. The new duo of Palmer and Hayden find success, but not the kind they are yearning for, as we watch them perform a number of great song and dance routines on stage, the most familiar of which is probably When You Wore a Tulip (And I Wore A Big Red Rose). Whenever things start going well, though, something bad happens. Jo is all torn up when Palmer starts spending all his free time with the famous singer Eve Minard, as Palmer has yet to figure out that he loves Jo as much as Jo loves him. When this hurdle is passed, the road ahead for the duo only gets rougher as war intervenes. Having finally secured a spot at The Palace, Palmer takes drastic action to avoid being drafted, but his rash act backfires on him in the worst way possible. The ending of the film concentrates as much on helping the war effort and patriotism as it does restoring, in quite a tender manner, the love and commitment of two people who belong together. Harry Palmer surely was meant to represent a lot of American men in wartime. Caught up in his own hopes and dreams, he ignores what is going on in Europe, then tries to find a way out of answering his draft summons when it inevitably comes. He learns that there are much more important things in life than performing at The Palace and that a man has a duty to serve his country when called upon, in whatever capacity he is capable of serving. Judy Garland's patriotic song and dance sequences and the real-life armed service radio broadcasts she appeared on throughout the early 1940s made her a pin-up girl of World War II. Definitely, this film carried a message to movie audiences to do what they could to support the troops going to war yet again, but its greatest power is wrung from the soul of Judy Garland in the form of many touching, dramatically powerful scenes of loss and heartache. For Me and My Gal, despite a great measure of comedy and delightful song and dance, follows a dark road at times, making it a movie that truly spans the entire spectrum of human emotion. It's impossible not to love this movie, and the fact that it delivers Gene Kelly's film debut and Judy's first truly adult dramatic role makes it all the more important and special.
Rating:
Summary: For Me & My Gal: A Paen to Patriotism
Review: When the Second World War started, Hollywood made the predictable switch to movies that would fortify America's spirit. In FOR ME AND MY GAL, director Busby Berkeley took a still teenage Judy Garland and paired her with Gene Kelly as both sang and danced their way through the period just preceding America's involvement in the First World War. Berkeley's choice to cast Garland and Kelly paid off big as FOR ME AND MY GAL became one of the top grossing films of 1942. The plot was less essential than creating a mood that America surely needed to meet the dangers posed by a Germany that was the villain in both wars. It made more sense to place the plot in 1917 rather than in the more contemporary post-Pearl Harbor year since Hollywood knew that it could tap into the fund of patriotism that still resonated in the minds of all Americans over 40. Garland is Jo Hayden, a small-town singer seeking to make it big in Vaudeville. Gene Kelly is Harry Palmer, a man of limitless singing/dancing ability who nevertheless suffers from some serious moral shortcomings. He is callow enough to think that there is a series of shortcuts that he can take so that he can have it all--marriage to Jo and a smashing career at the Palace in New York. What he learns is that talent hobbled with these ethical flaws merely guarantees loss of both. His flaws suggest a subtext that is neatly hidden beneath the hoopla of sensational songs and dances. Harry is America's Everyman, a basically decent sort who has chosen the Easy Way, only to find that this way is not so easy after all. The second half of the film is his attempt at regeneration of self. He volunteers to go Over There, if not to fight, than to entertain the troops. Along the way, he grows spiritually, saves the lives of many wounded soldiers, kills a few Germans, and returns home a hero. There is no way that Hollywood could make such a pro-America film today. FOR ME AND MY GAL is a rousing, flag-waving, morally core-valued movie that brings to mind not a dated film at all, but the realization that when Foreign Evil is foisted on us, Americans may yet need the patriotic sureness that Busby Berkeley knew existed in 1942 but probably could not find in 2003.
Rating:
Summary: "The Bells are Ringing........"
Review: Wonderful and beautifully transferred to DVD. Excellent production numbers and this just might be my new favorite Judy movie. Grab that bucket of popcorn pop in the DVD and let Judy do her thing. She is wonderful. It will be just a fun evening.
|
