CrawlerChunky
In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
Janis
One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.
Scarlet
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
johnnymyman-68540
If you loved Meet Me In St. Louis and The Wizard of Oz, and The Pirate, then you will love Easter Parade. It has great music, charming humor, fantastic dance scene, fabulous singing, and a heartwarming ending. The plot where the nightclub performer hires a young chorus girl to become his new dance partner to make his former partner jealous proving that he can make any partner a star is spectacular. You will enjoy watching this movie as much as I do, this is one of those rare musical that are so old, it's good.
evanston_dad
A colorful confection that more than anything proves what a powerhouse performer Judy Garland was, as she manages to upstage Fred Astaire at every turn, no mean feat.Garland plays a showgirl that Astaire plucks from the chorus line and decides to turn into a star, just to prove to his fame-hungry ex (played by a miscast Ann Miller) that he can. This shoestring of a plot is used to thread together a bunch of hummable Irving Berlin tunes, including the title number.The laughs in the film go almost exclusively to Garland, who's especially hilarious in a scene where she and Astaire dance for the first time in front of an audience and she louses it up. The most memorable musical moments are one in which Garland and Astaire dress up as hobos, and one that opens the film, featuring a solo dance performed by Astaire in a toy shop. Miller gets her moment to shine as well, and she's a dynamo, making you forget for a brief moment how ill-suited she is to play the glamorous girl that got away.Johnny Green and Roger Edens won an Oscar for adapting the film's musical score.Grade: B+
tavm
First, a personal note: While I had watched this previously on an independent TV station in Jacksonville, FL, during the '90s, I had a little child visitor at the time who wanted to play some games while the movie was running so I obliged him and missed some of the movie as a result. I had recently watched this on one DVD bought by my father years ago but that pixilated during Ann Miller's number "Shakin' the Blues Away" so I managed to see the rest from another one I borrowed from the library a few days ago. Okay, so when Fred Astaire retired after completing Irving Berlin's Blue Skies in 1946, he was going to keep busy raising horses and building his dance studios around the country. But only two years later, he seemed to want to come back and got an opportunity quicker than expected when Gene Kelly injured his ankle in an off-screen game and told Fred he'd be doing him a favor in agreeing to replace him. So Fred did and in doing so was not only reunited with the songs of Berlin but also got to team with Judy Garland for what turned to be the only time in their careers. Also, Ann Miller-after years of being in Columbia B-features-also got to appear in an M-G-M movie for her first time in her life! So with those three cast, it's no wonder this was such an enjoyable picture to watch, musical-wise! The plot, well, it's another in the dance man-loses-one-partner-gains-another-one done many times before. What matters is how great many of the numbers are like Asaire's "Drum Crazy" with the way he uses his feet on those things! Or Miller's number I mentioned earlier. And how about Fred and Judy's hilarious comic number "We're a Couple of Swells" with their being dressed as bums pretending to be rich aristocrats! Also, Astaire's "Steppin' Out with my Baby" with his slow-motion sequence was another highlight! Had Garland's "Mr. Monotony" also been kept in (Great outtake was eventually publicly shown in That's Entertainment, Part III) it would have been even better! Oh, and Peter Lawford wasn't bad with "A Fella with an Umbrella", either. So on that note, I highly recommend Easter Parade. P.S. In once again making note of people associated with my favorite movie-It's a Wonderful Life-with other things, here, it's screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett who wrote that and this one.
chaos-rampant
This was modeled after the cycle of Warner Bros musicals in the 30's; so for the first part we get various backstage tribulations about the effort to stage a show, usually a search for love that can inspire dance, with the eye-popping show in question as the second part.It starts with the miraculous dance pair breaking it off. She wants to be a star on her own right; he sets out to prove that he can get any girl to dance as well as she can. He plucks the first girl he sees out of a chorus line in a bar, just like he did with her the first time. She turns out to be a disaster, humorously rendered as her not even knowing which foot is left.So how to make headlines once more? Of course he grooms her into the image of that first woman, and she turns out great; but only because, unbeknownst to him, he was seducing out of her the love that can make a difference. So eventually the two rival shows are made to spin at the same time, vying for headlines and our attention. The new pair visits the opponent to strut their newfound triumph under her nose, but she's cunning enough to seduce a dance out of her ex-partner that will break them apart.Naturally, this being an MGM production, the finale is drenched with the wistful sentiment about wholesome values one is led to expect. The two of them stroll happy together on the Easter Parade, as promised in the beginning.So generally speaking this may seem like ordinary stuff for the time. Two things make it stand out however. One is Fred Astaire, such heavenly, chattery legs. Put simply, there is no Michael Jackson without Astaire. The other is a kind of soft Vertigo at the heart of the candy-colored spectacle about an obsession with cultivating an image, less morbid this go round, less dangerous, but potent the right amount if we keep in mind how it mirrors across the sparkling surface of a deeply troubled Judy Garland.We know how MGM cultivated the young star in the image of the chaste teenage girl that she's also saddled with in the opening of this film. In the finale she manages to lift herself out of the confines of that image and asserts herself as a sexual, dynamic woman, likely mapping to some part of her struggle in real life to pursue her heart. Among her many lovers, she counted Frank Sinatra, Welles, Mankiewicz, and Tyrone Power. She had enough pull in Hollywood by this time to get then husband Vincente Minnelli fired from this.Our loss here is that Chyd Charisse broke an ankle and could not appear. Ann Miller as replacement acquits herself pretty well as the scheming diva. Her last on-screen glimmer decades later would be Mulholland Dr., where she reflects on the bygone Technicolor glories here.
