Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Invitation to the Dance is what you get when you take an artist at the peak of his abilities and allow his imagination to run wild. Gene Kelly--and some very talented people in all fields--integrated music and dance to create three distinct stories.He reduces some scenes to their visual essences by using abstract or minimalist sets, aided by lighting effects. The third story includes cartoons, allowing Kelly to take his imagination beyond the bounds of human limitations and physics.The performances are a synthesis of various dance and related forms (ballet, tap, jazz, mime, acrobatics, pop, and ethnic) with musical accompaniment (classical, jazz--cool and hot--ethnic, and pop).Invitation to the Dance is a treat for any dance lover. It should be seen by all young students of dance.It would be interesting to see this film they way Kelly originally imagined it, with him dancing in one section only.

The first two segments of this film may or may not impress you, but do watch the third: "Sinbad the Sailor". Kelly plays an American sailor in an exotic Oriental market. He rubs an old lamp and a genie appears, played by an amazingly talented kid. After a bit of messing around,the genie gets a sailor suit, too. Then they open a book to a picture of a wonderous land. The genie transports them inside and all the rest features the two dancers (mostly Kelly alone) dancing with animation.This segment is much longer than any other live-plus-animation sequence until Mary Poppins excepting, possibly Song of the South whose sequences were nowhere near so complex as this. Kelly dances with an animated dragon (that wraps around him), into a harem, is chased by the Sultan's guards, has a long sequence with one harem girl, and then a very long sequence with the guards. This is amazing work for 1952, especially when you remember that every bit of the animation is hand-painted on cels. Hanna-Barbera (then with MGM doing Tom and Jerry directed the animation. (Kelly also did a famous dance number with Jerry in Anchors Aweigh eight years earlier.) Walt Disney advised. This is swell stuff and any fan of animation should give it a look.

this movie is probably one of the most boring pictures I ever saw. it has got nothing to tell, except for the three little stories that are brutally forced into a concept without inspiration, but filled with unusable ideas. oh yeah, Kelly was a genius alright, but this is a perfect example of how geniuses can BEEP the BEEP up. the stories are already known to the general audience, so what I was searching for, was a novelty about them all. I was bitter when I found out Kelly only repeated himself. the story with the clown made me wonder if I washed my feet today... too bad, this truly is a movie to see while washing your feet, so you can do something useful when the torment begins. second part, the 'crime': really stupid and boring, it made me compare the good with the bad, and this seemed to be the ugly. the third part made me realize Kelly repeats himself over and over again, like a little child with a doll or when a kid becomes a teenager. too bad for the whole idea, this movie didn't reach adulthood for me, it should have stayed in Kelly's brain.

This film includes three dance interpreted stories, choreographed and starring the great Gene Kelly. The first story is called "Circus" which tells the story of a circus clown who is secretly in love with the Circus Ballet Star who is openly in love with the Circus High-Wire-Walker. The second story is called "Ring Around The Rosy" which tells the story of a bracelet that is past from one silly lover to the next. The third story is called "Sinbad The Sailor" which tells the story of a navy sailor who, while on shore leave in Bagdad, finds a magic lamp that takes him on an animated adventure.Each story includes an all star cast of "then" well known dancers who give outstanding performances that only Gene Kelly fans and other dancers could appreciate. It is a delightful film, that will brighten any persons video library.