Sadly Over-hyped

Powerful

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

A musical version of William Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" and the play co-written by Sam & Bella Spewack, this Dorothy Kingsley screenplay was directed by George Sidney. Multiple Oscar winners Andre Previn and Saul Chaplin received merely an Academy Award nomination for this movie's Score.Howard Keel plays Fred Graham, an actor who's interested in playing the Petruchio character in Cole Porter's musical adaptation of the classic. He knows his ex-wife Lilli (Kathryn Grayson) would be perfect for "Katherine", so he conspires with Porter (Ron Randell), using the leggy Lois Lane (Ann Miller), to make her jealous enough to crave the role. Ms. Lane gets the "Bianca" role. Her dancer boyfriend Bill (Tommy Rall) is a gambler that forges Graham's name on an IOU such that Keenan Wynn and James Whitmore, playing hoods that represent the owed gangster, monitor the play, and even sing!Bobby Van and Bob Fosse are other dancers in the production. Willard Parker plays a millionaire Texan that falls for Lois. Life imitates art or vice versa.

Sprightly colorful throughly wonderful musical. Keel is perfect in the male lead and Kathryn Grayson in what along with Magnolia in Show Boat is her best role is terrifically loose and animated, a break from her normal persona, a shame than that this was almost the end of her film career. Ann Miller sizzles in "It's Too Darn Hot" even if her being able to perform the full number in someone's living room is a bit of a stretch. Of note are the costumes all of which are designed to take full advantage of the vivid Technicolor by being every color of the rainbow and lordy those mens tights are snug! All the supporting players deliver the goods and while almost every song or dance routine is a terrific "From This Moment On" stands out as an exceptional number. A winner, see it!

I'll be honest--up until about halfway through this one, I wasn't all that impressed. It wasn't bad--just not all that good. However, the film started to gel and got much better as it progressed--and overall is an excellent musical. So, stick with it--it's worth the wait.I assumed (incorrectly) that this was just a musical version of Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew". However, and here's the weird twist, it's a film about a Broadway production of "Taming of the Shrew" and there are some parallels between the off-stage antics and the play. Not surprisingly, this was originally a Broadway play--a very, very successful one.It starts off with Howard Keel meeting with Cole Porter to discuss the play--only, in an odd twist, it's an actor playing Porter and why they didn't have Porter play himself is beyond me. They talk about having Keel's ex-wife (Katherine Grayson) co-star with him in the play--but she hates him. So, using another lady (Ann Miller), they manipulate her into taking the role. But not so fast--Grayson's character hates Keel's so much that she's constantly threatening to walk off--even in the middle of the show.What helped me to like the film (most of which consists of their opening night) is the addition of a goofy subplot involving gambling debts and a couple of mobsters (Keenan Wynn and James Whitmore). They are great--quite funny and their terrible singing and dancing was the best part of the film (I REALLY liked their song "Brush Up Your Shakespeare"--the lyrics are great). Overall, a clever film that had few brilliant tunes but enough going for it to keep you happy. Well worth your time--even if some of Tommy Rall's lip syncing was really off.

Like many of the screen musicals of the 50s, this one was based on a successful stage musical. In this case, it was a bizarre intermingling of Shakespeare's Taming Of The Shrew with a parallel of Shakespeare's story going on between the cast of the show.The screen version, filmed with a cast of individuals who would normally have been the supporting players (Howard Keel, despite a number of leading roles, never really leaped to the top of the first division), had the added peculiarity of being filmed in 3D, though not widely seen as such.For all that, this is a big success, in part due to its bizarreness (Keenan Wynn and Richard Whitmore as gangster song and dance men, anyone), in part due to the winning performances, and in part - in big part - due to the sparkling Cole Porter score. A highly capable melodicist, Porter was surely the supreme lyricist of the 20th century.