TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

JohnHowardReid Producer: Pandro S. Berman. Copyright 2 September 1938 by RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Radio City Music Hall: 22 September 1938. U.S. release: 2 September 1938. Australian release: 29 December 1938. 83 minutes.SYNOPSIS: If you believed Fred as a ballet master in "Shall We Dance", you shouldn't have a credibility problem here. He plays a psychiatrist. Ginger is a radio singer who consults him professionally, and we all know that patients fall for their psychiatrists, don't we? A somewhat hypnotized Ginger is then seen in a country club, and who is there, too? (Such suspense!) It's Fred, of course! The only trouble on the horizon is that she is already engaged to someone else, and that someone is also at the country club. (Where else!) But that hypnosis thing is making Ginger do strange things. She insults her radio sponsor, tries to shoot Fred (when she loves him), and can only be brought to her senses by a punch in the eye. She is suitably attired at the time in her wedding gown. Ginger and Fred walk (not dance) down the aisle to matrimony.NOTES: I always wondered what the difference was between an arranger and an orchestrator. So I asked Max Steiner: "An orchestrator is a man who takes a composition and puts it into orchestra parts. An arranger is a man who takes a melody, puts different harmonies to it and fixes it up, and usually ruins it. However, he is called an arranger. They should all be shot. The orchestrator just takes what he is given to do and if he has any ideas of his own, he had better not show them."Nominated for Hollywood's major annual awards for Art Direction (Polglase alone was nominated), losing to "Adventures of Robin Hood"; Best Music Score, won by Alexander's Ragtime Band; Best Song, "Change Partners and Dance", won by "Thanks for the Memory" from "Big Broadcast of 1938".Negative cost: $1,253,000. Initial domestic rentals gross: $1,113,000. Initial foreign rentals gross: $618,000. After paying distribution expenses, this resulted in a loss to RKO of $68,000, the first Astaire-Rogers film to actually lose money.COMMENT: Although it does have a couple of genuinely amusing moments, "Carefree" is saddled with a silly plot which unfortunately tends to take over the picture. It's well into the second reel before we strike the first musical number — a solo dance by Fred Astaire. The first duet is introduced in a dream sequence (originally planned for Technicolor but actually shot in black-and-white). But then it's a long dreary haul before the lavish "The Yam". This begins quietly enough with Ginger singing, developing into a spectacular ensemble executed through several rooms before ending up back on the dance floor. There nimble Fred entertains us with a series of dazzling lifts as he swings Miss Rogers over his leg (braced on a series of tables).Director Sandrich often gets the dialogue scenes over with in long takes. Unfortunately this doesn't solve the basic problem. What's needed are more songs, less talk. Also, although there's a happy support cast, the movie really needs an Eric Blore or an Edward Everett Horton to liven it up. Still Ginger Rogers has a meaty part which she plays with more than her usual skill and all her customary charm. Ralph Bellamy as usual does fine by the "other man".But when all's said and sung, frankly we couldn't give a hoot where the subconscious mind is located.

dglink All of the Astaire-Rogers collaborations at RKO are worth seeing, although some are less deserving than others. Unfortunately, "Carefree" falls among the lesser offerings, despite the movie's fluid and graceful dance numbers. The silly plots of these films usually pit an antagonistic Rogers against a love-sick Astaire until Rogers realizes she really loves Fred more than the stiff hunk she originally intended to marry. What woman wouldn't prefer skinny, balding Fred to a Ralph Bellamy or a Randolph Scott. After all, hunks can't dance. "Carefree" wraps the standard Astaire-Rogers plot around some preposterous psychoanalytical nonsense that involves hypnotism, and rational brains may tune out between dance numbers. At times the film is downright unfunny. When a hypnotized Rogers stalks Astaire with a loaded shotgun at a golf course, the intended mayhem is more horrifying than hysterical.Luella Gear as Aunt Cora is the intended wise-cracking sidekick, but she is tepid, and her cynical remarks fall flat. The film sorely needs an Edward Everett Horton or a Helen Broderick to spark the proceedings, although two veteran character actors do bring a touch of needed life to their scenes. Franklin Pangborn appears briefly as the token gay stereotype, but he has little to do but flutter and faint, which probably had the audience rolling in the aisles in pre-Stonewall days. However, at least RKO gave their gay actors screen billing. Hattie McDaniel, who has more screen time than Pangborn, plays the African-American stereotyped maid, but she received no screen billing at all. A year later she would receive an Academy Award for "Gone with the Wind." Six writers are credited for the inane story and screenplay, but their names are best left unsaid. Mark Sandrich directed, but his work on arguably the best Astaire-Rogers pairing, "Top Hat," was superior. Only choreographer Hermes Pan deserves to be mentioned among the production crew. His work with Astaire and Rogers to Irving Berlin's music is what gives "Carefree" a reason to be pulled from the vaults.

Charles Herold (cherold) Admittedly most Astaire Rogers movies are kinda dumb, but Astaire as a psychotherapist is particularly unconvincing. He's actually a pretty terrible psychotherapist who seems to despise his patients and has no ethical code at all, but then, this is Hollywood psychotherapy, so that's understandable. And Astaire often plays characters who will run a truck over their best friend to get the girl. So I'm not sure in the context of his movies the story is particularly objectionable.The problem is the dialog is weak, the secondary characters aren't especially amusing (i.e. no one is as much fun as, say Edward Everett Horton) and the story is particularly engrossing.There are a couple of nice dances, including Astaire golfing while tap dancing and controlling a hypnotized Rogers, but the Irving Berlin songs are generally forgettable (except, of course, Change Partners and Dance with Me.This generically and irrelevantly named movie is certainly watchable, but it's not near Astaire/Roger's best.

JasonLeeSmith If you attempt to look at the plot carefully (never a good idea in a musical) this is a rather repellent movie. The practice of Psychotherapy wasn't as well known or as well respected as it is today, and the film was clearly written by someone who seemed to think of it as some fad medical cure indulged in mainly by rich and foolish women. As such we get to see Fred Astaire, the therapist, subjecting Ginger Rogers, the patient, to all manner of barbaric (to modern eyes) treatments in order to find out why she won't marry his best friend. Eventually Astaire uses hypnosis to force her to marry him, and then force him not to. Clearly, movie doctors were not subjected to as severe a code of ethics as are real ones.Its a pretty typical outing for Astaire and Rogers. Astaire's dancing is extraordinary (the dance scene on the golf course is great, as is the one where he dances with a hypnotized Rogers). Rogers' comic timing is, as always, wonderful. The secondary characters are all two-dimension cut-outs, but they're entertaining ones. If the characters didn't have quite the same sparkle to their interplay, remember, this was Astaire and Rogers' eighth film together and artistic differences were beginning to create a strain.My biggest issue with this movie was the scene in which they sing the song "I Used To Be Colorblind". This was dream sequence, and it lasted about five minutes. "Carefree" is a black and white movie and the intent originally was to film the dream sequence in color a'la "Wizard of Oz". Apparently, somewhere in the production process, people balked at the cost and it was produced in black and white along with the rest of the film. Being filmed in black and white makes the song, and the entire sequence makes not one lick of sense, because the song is about how crisp and clear the world seems in color. Not only that, but since it was designed to be viewed on color film, not in black and white, the sets weren't designed with that same high degree of contrasts they would have if they had been designed to be viewed in black and white. As such, things in the dream sequence are LESS clear than in the rest of the movie, not more. I'm just appalled that the studio could spring for a few minutes of color footage for a film with such proved money-makes as Astaire and Rogers.