Bereamic Awesome Movie

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

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

TheLittleSongbird Royal Wedding may not be one of the classic musicals and everybody involved have been in and done better things, but any fans of great choreography and dancing and Fred Astaire will find plenty to like about it. It does have a good shortcomings, that are thankfully outweighed by the many things that are delightful.Starting with what didn't come off so well, the story is as thin as a wafer and occasionally loses momentum when there's no singing or dancing. The script is very commonplace, and while it mostly flows well, reads well tonally and has entertaining moments some of the comic moments fall limp and it's cringe-worthingly stereotypical in places(i.e. Keenan Wynn's slang). The songs and choreography are top notch, but the (slightly) clumsily staged finale was an exception. Two performances don't work. Peter Lawford has to work with a dully written character that often felt incidental to the plot, and he brings very little personality or charm to it. Even worse is Sarah Churchill, she is incredibly wooden here and doesn't ever look comfortable with what she's given. Her chemistry with Astaire completely lacks warmth, and veers on non-existent on occasions.The production values are very colourful however, not quite lavish but very beautiful nonetheless, and the photography shows adept technical skills and very good attention to detail. The songs are great, with three being particularly memorable. One is the Oscar-nominated Too Late Now, which has a lot of emotional resonance and is performed with just as much by Jane Powell(though maybe Judy Garland may have given it more heft if she was cast). Two is How Could You Believe Me..., which benefits from some of Lerner's funniest and cleverest lyric writing and a genuinely easy-going natural chemistry between Astaire and Powell. Last is the infectiously catchy I Left My Hat in Haiti. The choreography is even better, there is so much energy and sparkle to it and the two highlights both feature Astaire and are among his best and most iconic. One being Sunday Jumps, with the most inventive use of a duet with a hat-rack you'll ever find in a film, and the other being his dancing on the walls and ceiling in his hotel room in You're All the World to Me which is the epitome of jaw-dropping.Royal Wedding may not be perfect in the writing department, but it's not too slow-going(even those bits lacking momentum don't hurt the film that badly) and has an endearingly light-footed, good-humoured(though not always) and warm-hearted quality, in a way also that often entertains and never talks down. So while there are flaws in the writing, the spirit and tone are just right. The characters are not too original and Lawford and Churchill's are not interesting at all, but the rest of the characters are very likable and engaging. Stanley Donen's direction is very accomplished technically and in terms of pacing and balancing everything is very assured also. The performances on the whole are fine, Keenan Wynn is amusing and Jane Powell is a more than worthy partner for Astaire and plays her role with plenty of attractive spunk and graceful charm. But it is Astaire who is the main reason to see the film, he was one of the dance world's greatest and one of the all-time greats at interpreting songs in musicals. While he didn't have the best voice in the world, though it was still an above-pleasant one, his dancing is masterful and he exudes complete confidence.Overall, has shortcomings and falls short of being great(like it could have been considering it had Astaire and was directed by Donen). But these shortcomings are far outweighed by the good things, and the good things are delightful and a good many. 7/10 Bethany Cox

SnoopyStyle Tom (Fred Astaire) and Ellen Bowen (Jane Powell) are a brother and sister song and dance act. They travel to London to do a show. They do fall for people along the way, but the story is almost unimportant.This is most noted for the dancing of Fred Astaire. He did a couple of iconic dances for the ages. In one, he's dancing with a coat rack in the exercise room. It's all about his gracefulness. The other dance happens in his room as it gets rotated. He's literally dancing on the ceiling. These go down in movie dance history. Astaire and Bowen do a pretty good ballroom dance on the ship as the giant floor starts tilting back and forth. It's pretty good but lesser known.Jane Powell does some real old fashion singing. It's from another age. Although I really liked one song sung by Powell and Astaire, 'HOW COULD YOU BELIEVE ME WHEN I SAID I LOVED YOU WHEN YOU KNOW I'VE BEEN A LIAR ALL MY LIFE'. It's a snappy little ditty.

JasonLeeSmith There's not even enough substance in this movie to call it champagne, its pure soda pop."Royal Wedding" is a true classic Astaire movie. It contains the spectacular number where he dances on the walls and ceiling of his room, and its worth watching just for that.The plot is amusing if only because its so flimsy, even by the standards of movie musicals. Astaire and Powell play a brother and sister dance team who go to England to star in a show at about the same time as the royal wedding of (then) Princess Elizabeth II. They both fall in love. They decided (for like two minutes) that they don't want to get married, and then they change their minds and they both marry their loved ones. That's it, no wacky misunderstandings, no awkward situations, nothing. There are one or two other subplots, but they are resolved in equally effortless ways. Its like the shortest episode of Three's Company ever.Of course the plot is padded by like half a dozen dance numbers, which are nothing special (except the aforementioned dancing on the ceiling routine), but since its Fred Astaire, they are a joy to watch.Keenan Wynne has a really fun part, playing twin brothers, one from Brooklyn and one from London. He clearly has a wonderful time doing several routines where he plays both brothers having long distance phone calls with each other.Anyway, its a very fun more, but totally lacking in any kind of substance.

bkoganbing One of Fred Astaire's most charming musicals is Royal Wedding where as if taken from his own real life, he's part of a brother and sister act with Jane Powell. We never did get to see Adele Astaire perform on screen, but rumor has it she was exquisite in her steps and lovely to see. And like Jane in this film she married into the aristocracy.In fact both brother and sister have their romances in Royal Wedding, Fred with none other than Sarah Churchill who was the daughter of a well known British politician. On shipboard Jane attracts the attention of Peter Lawford who was a member of the aristocracy and something of a skirt chaser.All this is against the background of the royal wedding that took place in 1947 between Mr. Phillip Mountbatten and Ms. Elizabeth Windsor. Another reviewer astutely remarked this film was on the MGM drawing boards for some time. In fact it was originally meant for Judy Garland, but she had her breakdown and Jane stepped into the part. Despite all the British locales, the cast never left the MGM lot, footage of the real royal wedding and other London establishing shots were used.Jane got three lovely numbers to sing, The Happiest Day in a Lifetime, Open Your Eyes, and Too Late Now, the last being nominated for Best Song. In fact Jane Powell had a unique distinction of having two film songs up in the same year for the Oscar, the other being Wonder Why from Rich, Young, And Pretty. I can't recollect another performer this ever happened to, not even her co-star Fred Astaire or Bing Crosby who did introduce the Oscar winning song for 1951, In The Cool Cool Cool of the Evening from Here Comes The Groom.Songwriters Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner didn't do too bad for Fred either. Royal Wedding is famous as the picture in which Fred Astaire did his surreal dance on the ceiling. Thinking about his lady love Sarah, Fred, alone in his hotel room starts to sing and dance You're All the World To Me and ends up dancing on the sides of the wall and ceiling of his room. This was accomplished by constructing a set that turned with the furniture and fixtures nailed down. I can't fathom the precision it took to get that number right and retain the spontaneous look that Astaire's dancing was noted for. Fred also sang and danced I Left My Hat in Haiti and Every Night at Seven.The duet that Powell and Astaire have is the longest song title on record to date. How Can You Believe Me When You Know I've Been A Liar All My Life has Fred and Jane as a gangster and his moll. Astaire was fabulous and Jane more than kept up with him in the number. When Judy Garland had her breakdown, her first public appearance after leaving the hospital was on a pair of Bing Crosby's Philco Radio Program where guest starred with Bob Hope as well. Judy did a rollicking version of the Liar song with Bing and it's the only instance where you can get an idea of what she might have been like in Powell's role. This film was a favorite of my mother's, when we watched on VHS about 20 years ago, she loved Fred Astaire's Sunday Jumps number. This is a sequence on board ship where Fred asks to use the ship's gym for rehearsal and does a marvelously inventive sequence with the gym equipment even including a coat hanger. If there's an example of Fred Astaire's ingenuity in making his material look spontaneous this is it. It's well known the number of man hours he rehearsed to get that spontaneous look, but it certainly pays off here.And this review is dedicated to my mother, a very big fan of this film. I can still hear her remark about how graceful Fred Astaire moved.