Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

. . . created the Mom and Pop scheme for American Franchise Chains so that he could become a Billionaire (along the lines of current White House Resident Rump), giving him the freedom to "sample the goods" (or, in Rump's terminology, "Grab their pies," though the actual Presidential lingo uses a different P-word besides "pies" that common average normal people are not allowed to use in public) in order to swipe a more suitable "Trophy Wife" from one of his franchisee Pops while dumping the original spouse who Brung him to the Dance of Big Money (again inspiring Rump), CAREFREE does for Psychiatry what Kroc and Rump have done for billionaires. When you're a shrink, you can use your Tools of the Trade (hypnotism, the Power of Subliminal Suggestion, etc.) to have the patient of your choice Shrunkwrapped to go (bow and all)--even if she's your best friend's girl. Fred Astaire's treatment of Ginger Rogers in CAREFREE is enough to make Bill Cosby look like a courtly gentleman in comparison. Fred and Ginger fans will need a dialog-free alternate audio track to really enjoy CAREFREE.

This movie, made at the zenith of Astaire and Roger's popularity, is one of their lesser works—especially given the time in which it was made. They had already made: Flying Down to Rio (1933), The Gay Divorcée (1934), Roberta (1935), Top Hat (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936) and Swing Time (1936), and Shall We Dance (1937). The movie (Carefree) would be followed by The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939) and later, The Barkleys of Broadway (1949). So this would be the 8th of their 10 movie dancing projects together.As the movie opens, we see Steve Arden (Ralph Bellamy) in what would become one of his best stock straight-man roles, that of the want-to-be husband waiting to marry the movie's leading lady, who invariably ends up with the film's leading man. This is a role that he had held in Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth (1937) and would later hold in Howard Hawks' His Gal Friday (1940), losing the leading lady to the Cary Grant it both cases. In this case, his would-be wife is Amanda (Ginger Rogers). Since Steve fails to get Amanda to the alter, he calls on his old friend and psychoanalyst Tony Flagg (Fred Astaire) to help persuade her to overcome her lack of commitment to him. As Amanda and Steve's friends and family—I loved Luella Gear's dry humor as Amanda's Aunt Cora--following Tony and Amanda around to see how he is progressing with the persuasion. The movie takes us from place to place where a lot of singing, dancing, and comedy unfold. The most memorable song in the movies is Irving Berlin's 'Change Partners and Dance.'Another memorable moment is the dance that Astaire did at the driving range while hitting golf balls as part of the routine. Fred and Ginger had a couple of memorable dances in the movie: A swing number called 'The Yam,' and a slow motion dream sequence, 'I Used to Be Color Blind. The latter was a sequence that was OBVIOUSLY meant to be shot in color and wasn't due to RKO's budgetary restrains at the time.

No movie with Astaire dancing can be anything less than half decent to watch. Which is pretty much where 'carefree' is for me.The main point is that this is a Rogers & Astaire movie, not Astaire & Rogers. Astaire is the sidekick for this outing and the movie suffers for it. Instead of pizazz and style, we get cutesy, instead of extraordinary, we get ordinary.The standard of songs doesn't help.Oh and the use of slow-mo for a dance sequence seems, although maybe innovative, a bad misstep, robbing us of the fluidity that was so special.In short, there are better ways to spend an hour and a half.

Carefree marked the third collaboration of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers singing and dancing to an Irving Berlin score. Unfortunately it would prove to be the weakest of the films, the others being Top Hat and Follow The Fleet. One thing was that Irving Berlin wrote a lot less music for this than the other two.The second thing was that it involved psychiatry and we'd have to wait for such musicals as Lady in the Dark and On A Clear Day before the subject was handled in any way responsibly.I'm not sure the subject was the proper one for Astaire and Rogers. The plot has Rogers seeing Astaire professionally while she's engaged to Ralph Bellamy who is playing the typical Ralph Bellamy part. I guess because it's Ralph Bellamy liberties can be taken with the leading lady by a her psychiatrist.It was a bit much to swallow, a man who gave up studying the dance to become a disciple of Sigmund Freud. But that's what Fred Astaire is in Carefree. Usually the two don't mix. I can't imagine Freud breaking out into an intricate Astaire dance routine.I will say that Irving Berlin did give Fred and Ginger some good songs to sing and dance to. The print I have is totally black and white and the I Used To Be Color Blind dream sequence definitely loses something when not seen in color. Fred and Ginger are at their liveliest doing The Yam and the rest of the cast gets involved. In fact I was surprised at how nimble Clarence Kolb was on his feet.Fred's plaintive plea for Ginger to Change Partners got an Oscar nomination for Best Song, but it lost to Bob Hope's perennial theme of Thanks for the Memory. I could not quite enjoy Carefree as much I have other Astaire/Rogers collaborations. When you think about, Fred's using his professional training to mess with her mind. His heart may be in the right place, but his medical ethics stink.