Rating: 
Summary: Is there a better Musical movie?
Review: My local PBS station has taken to running "An American in Paris" just about every week- and if I'm home when they do, somehow I always end up watching at least part of it. This show is so good, so magnificently well written, composed, acted, danced and sung that it's just magical. Every musical number is a classic, and the ballet at the end is as fresh and as exciting as it was when the film was released. There are so many great scenes it's impossible to list them all. Even scenes incidental to the plot stand alone as wonderful performances- when Georges Guetary sings "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise" it's an absolute showstopper. And of course, there's Kelly's dancing. People may argue about who was the best dancer in American musicals and films, and whether Kelly was better than Astair, and vice versa, but there's absolutely no denying that when Kelly danced, he did so a way that was so fluid, so apparantly effortless, that it took modern dancing to a level never before seen in film- or even on stage. Five stars. Six stars. Ten stars. Whatever. It's just the best, period.
Rating:
Summary: Great movie!
Review: I saw this again for the first time in about ten years. What a fantastic film. Gene Kelly is excellent as both actor and dancer. His character is a bit brash and perhaps over-confident, but Kelly still makes him likeable. Beautifully shot, great music, and a witty screenplay(the dialogue at least--the story's rather limp) make for a wonderful, romantic movie.
Rating:
Summary: a masterpiece
Review: Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron dance up a storm in MGM's ultimate musical confection, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS. Centered around the timeless George and Ira Gershwin catalogue of songs, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS tells of exactly that - an American ex-GI living in Paris as a struggling artist. After he is "sponsored" by a wealthy American socialite (Nina Foch), he falls in love with a shy shopgirl (Leslie Caron), who is engaged to his friend, a nightclub singer (Georges Guetary). The climactic "American In Paris Ballet", which runs for seventeen minutes, tells of his struggles with Paris, his frustrations, his loves and the things he feels are beyond him. Each segment of the ballet is set against a different Impressionist painting. Winner of eight Oscars, including Best Picture and also an award for Gene Kelly's inspired choreography.
Rating:
Summary: Now this is Gene Kelly!
Review: This film shines on the screen as if it transcends everything and every situation plausable. Of course the plot is about as holely as swiss chesse underwear but the essence of the film is pure romance and dance and song and when you have one the most Charismatic men on screen who can dance as if everybody can do the same then well the film stands all on its own as pure fantasy pop culture. The music is great O.K.-Gershwin, how could it not be? But the film has such a weirs dream like setting of technicolor splash that if you blink too often than the film seems to stick in your mind on the last scene you saw! Now that is good film making. The passing of this film as being Sining in the rain stepchild is undeserved. This film shares nothing in common with that other master piece while Rain uses the above elments as satire paris uses it as the main device. And the final sequence is amazing kelly has to be the best athletic dancer ever on screen. The costumes colors, songs, dances and pure sense of being what it is-pure day-dreaming magic is breathtaking! Because some of the best things on the screen come from visions in dreams.
Rating: 
Summary: Kelly and Gershwin can't miss!
Review: Not exactly what I would call a "great" movie. It's doesn't make my list of great films like "The Bicycle Thief", "Wild Strawberries", "The Godafather", and "Rear Window". It really doesn't offer nothing new to the genre of musicals, while I'm sure at it's time of release it must of been amazing to watch, someone had to like it if it won Best Picture! But, I don't think this movie is\was all that good to have won so many awards. The movie does contain a certain charm that is without missing from movies today, there's no question about that! And with a Gershwin score, it makes it even harder to resist. Listening to songs like "Our Love Is Here To Stay", "Embarceable You", "S'wonderful", and "I Got Rhythm". The movie, many should know now, is about an American painter living in Paris who with help from a certain lady, Milo Roberts (Nina Foch), just might become a major painter. That's is of course if he can stay away from Lise (Leslie Caron) long enough to actually paint. The directing by Vincente Minnelli was very good, the screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner is so-so. The movie as a whole has it moments, and works well enough where I'm able to recommend it to people, only I'm not too overjoyed about the movie. If you like musicals, this is worth your time.
Rating:
Summary: Good musical: below average transfer
Review: Overall, this film is very entertaining, although the dance number at the end started to become a little long. The transfer to DVD left a little to be desired in my opinion. The color wasn't very good in a couple of places, and I noticed a few frames with red blotches. "An American in Paris" is good, but if you want Gene Kelley at his best, get "Singin' in the Rain."
Rating: 
Summary: An Idiot in Paris
Review: Time has not been good to this still sumptuous production from l950. Gene Kelly, for one, is an acquired taste. In this bloated, vanity musical,he portrays the insufferable, arrogant, cocky Jerry, your typical untalented artist, starving in Paris, who can afford to throw a hissy fit when he thinks wealthy art patron, Nina Foch, is actually after his body, instead of his art work! No one in this film act like anyone whose ever existed on the planet earth. Kelly makes you grit your teeth because of his arrogant, smug grin, rolling his eyes and doing his Kelly thing of fluttering his hands whenever he dances (this is supposed to be his trademark) He works extra hard to show what a macho, heterosexual guy he is by oogling Leslie Caron in a restaurant while ignoring his date, Nina Foch. In one hard-to-watch scene, Kelly pretends to be a woman in one of those beloved musical numbers where the male dancer throws a towel over his head, bats his eyes, flips his wrists, and thinks he's being hysterically funny. The ballet that ends the movie is a knockout--but is totally out of place. The color is still gorgeous, the clothes beautiful. If it's eye-candy you want, then this is a perfect movie for you. You might even get a kick out of all the macho posturing and preening by the male star who, as a starving Parisian artist,spends more time tapping his heels than at the easel.
Rating:
Summary: One of the worst big budget musicals
Review: An American in Paris has to be the most pointless, bloated musical to have come out of MGM in the 1950's. Taking the great Gershwin songs as a foundation, this film is just plain ugly, annoying, stupid. The big ballet at the end is nothing but a very stupid fantasy set to the title piece of music (which has been edited and re-arranged!)It goes nowhere and is actually absurd at times as Gene Kelly strains to make some kind of narrative/visual sense out of it all. Leslie Caron looks horse faced in this and there is zero chemistry between her and Kelly. This film used to be praised as Hollywood creating art but today it is clear that this was a pretentious piece of garbage with absurdly high aspirations and very low accomplishment. Difficult to sit through. Kelly ruins some great Gershwin songs (his "I got rhythmn" is one of the worst versions you will ever see). A tasteless theatre queen's idea of what a hollywood musical should be-all glitz, color and schmaltz. Terrible, terrible, terrible.
Rating:
Summary: The best of Gene Kelly!
Review: American in Paris is deffinitly one of Kelly's greatest movies! The story line was great and the dancing was at it's best. If you are a Gene Kelly fan this movie is a must have!!!
Rating:
Summary: Minnelli and M~G~M at their best
Review: With all due respect to devotees of "Singin' in the Rain", I think "An American in Paris" is the best musical ever made. Stanley Donen was an innovative director, but Vincente Minnelli was a genius in his field, and "An American in Paris" was his masterpiece. I choose "An American in Paris" over the others for various reasons. (One example: "Meet Me in St Louis" is charming Americana, but it's spoiled by that melodramatic episode in the middle with Tootie's cut lip and the Boy Next Door being blamed; it's so contrived it might have dropped out of another picture.) "An American in Paris' is a completely successful musical with Gershwin songs culled from their stage shows of a previous generation (for instance, "S Wonderful" is from the 1927 "Funny Face" and "I Got Rhythm" is from 1930's "Girl Crazy"), a trim script by Alan Jay Lerner, and perfect casting. Gene Kelly at 38 was in his prime. And here let me say that Jerry Mulligan, Kelly's character in the film, is the brash, can-do kind of guy who was vastly admired in America by both men and women in the years following World War II. His aggressive attitude towards life represented qualities that had won the war. If today he seems a little chauvinistic (in every sense of the word) ... well, times change. The fact remains that Jerry is an ex-G.I. who has mastered the French language and venerates French culture. Hardly the Ugly American. On the flip side is his New World naïveté. In one scene he and his French girl friend Lise (Leslie Caron) meet shyly outside a sidewalk café and take a table. But Lise immediately becomes aware that an old roué nearby is checking her out (assuming she's just been picked up). Embarrassed, Lise asks to leave the café. But Jerry? The poor dope has no idea what's happened. Similarly, the whole movie has a sharp edge unusual for light entertainment. It's evident in the rich American Milo Roberts (Nina Foch) with her soignée chilliness and her somewhat S & M relationship with Jerry. And it's evident in the curmudgeon wit of Adam Cook (Oscar Levant), "the world's oldest child prodigy". His fantasy of playing Gershwin's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra single-handed is every musician's dream/nightmare. The Old World is represented by Henri Baurel, a music hall star, performed by Georges Guetary, who was (I suspect) basically playing himself. (His rendition of "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise" is the film's only traditional cabaret number.) Throughout the story, his boulevardier suavity,not to mention the savoir faire of the minor characters, indicates the Gallic easygoing attitude towards sex, which was about 20 years ahead of the U.S.'s. (Incidently, look close in the Beaux Arts ball sequence and you'll spot a young gay couple passing Kelly on the staircase.) Despite its glossiness, the picture has a refreshing spontaneity. Notice in the "By Strauss" number that Kelly's cap gets knocked off his head by the florist's skirt. At first he grabs for it, but then it's like "Ah, t' hell with it" and he keeps on going. Appropriately, all the acting is natural and subdued. But not the climatic ballet! It has to be the most lavish experience in all of film entertainment, before or since. It's been said that this ballet is "too much", but i think mehitabel in paris would have said theres no such thing as too toujours gai. With its 3-strip Technicolor, its numerous sets, its hundreds of costumes, Kelly's superb choreography, and of course gorgeous Gershwin, the "An American in Paris" ballet is, like the movie itself, le spectacle ne plus ultra. Savourez!
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