Top Hat

Rating:
Summary: I'm... puttin' on my Top Hat...
Review: What a fantastic movie this is! It features wonderful music by Irving Berlin, wonderful elegance all around, and especially, wonderful Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, the best team in the history of movies. The movie glides along, and you glide with it, and are swept up in the sheer joy of it all. The plot is absurd: Ginger thinks Fred is her best friends' husband. Fred, of course has no idea of this and pursues Ginger relentlessly. All of this is just an excuse for singing and dancing, and there is plenty of it, to some timeless Irving Berlin songs. It is some of the best you'll ever see. From the first moment when Fred starts puttering around to the tune of "No Strings," you wind up with a big grin on your face and amazement at how good he is. Ginger Rogers was always his best partner, because she was a perfect foil and a great dancer as well. But there was more to it than that. She was also a good actress and had great comic timing and always seemed ready to go along with the silliness of the plot. Here her best moment (and the best dance in the movie) is "Isn't This A Lovely Day." It is set in a sort of gazebo in a rainstorm and it is marvelous- the two wind up moving into a little tap competition- then thunder is heard, Ginger leaps into Fred's arms, they break apart, the music begins getting faster and faster, and suddenly they are whirling around the gazebo in giddy joy. The whole movie is marvelous, in fact. There is not a moment where I was dissapointed. 100 minutes of sheer pleasure.