Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

TheLittleSongbird One of my least favourite films/musicals featuring Esther Williams, along with 'Texas Carnival' and 'Jupiter's Darling'. All three watchable but very flawed. 'Skirts Ahoy!' is not a sinking dud, but considering the talent involved (as well as Williams, there's Vivian Blaine, Debbie Reynolds, Bobby Van and songs penned by Harry Warren and Ralph Blane) it should have been better, much better.Williams herself is captivating, she has a graceful charm and sassiness, while her swimming talent and aquatic skills are enough to make one green with envy. She is well supported by a polished and energetic turn from Vivian Blaine, while Billy Eckstine and Emmett Lynn are suitably sincere and Debbie Reynolds and Bobby Van lighten up the screen and really liven things up.'Skirts Ahoy!' looks nice enough, the costume and set design are not elaborate or lavish but handsome and colourful enough and the film is photographed very nicely. The songs are all pleasant, though only one is properly memorable and that is the modest hit "What Good is a Girl (Without a Guy"). The way the numbers are staged is energetic and graceful and enthusiastically performed, Williams' water ballet and "Oh By Jingo" performed with terrific gusto by Reynolds and Van.However, there is no chemistry between Williams and Barry Sullivan. Sullivan further has the indignity of having next to nothing to do and coming over as bland. Joan Evans struggle with the singing and dancing, the inexperience really shows, and also struggles to bring any likable qualities to a character that can border on the desperately annoying.Despite some nice light, funny and endearingly fluffy moments, too much of the script is soggier than very watery cucumber sandwiches. The story is wafer thin, flimsy doesn't cut it describing the thinness of it, with pacing that really plods in the non-song and dance sequences (where the film comes to life) and an improbable resolution. 'Skirts Ahoy!' further suffers from being overlong, due to too much of its basic narrative content being as thin as it was that was difficult to overlook, and for being over-stuffed in other parts. Direction is indifferent.Overall, not a bad film but never fully leaves the deck. Most of the cast and some nice moments keep it afloat but the story and script threaten to sink it and almost do. 5/10 Bethany Cox

marcslope Esther Williams is top-billed and dripping-wet as usual (an underwater ballet with two cloying kiddies is especially hard to take), but the truly frightening presence here is that of Vivian Blaine, fast on the heels of her Broadway triumph in "Guys and Dolls." She had been a likeable but unremarkable singer at 20th in the 40s, then "G&D" gave her a new persona in the character of Adelaide, the adenoidal, Brooklynese nightclub dancer. Here she's Adelaide in all but name, and her rambunctiousness makes Betty Hutton look timid. Her overemphatic line readings and hoydenishness quickly become wearing, but you don't forget her.Esther, who sang acceptably and had a nice comic sense in addition to her aquatic gifts, is a gracious presence and has more to act than usual. Here she's a headstrong rich girl who learns humility--not exactly a fresh idea, but it's spun out gracefully by screenwriter Isobel Lennart, and given some appealing feminist filigrees. The songs are OK, second-lead Joan Evans is dull, and the nearly two-hour running time feels padded out, especially with a couple of specialty numbers thrown in. But it's a decent Technicolor time-passer, with all that postwar Hollywood patriotism that seems to be coming back in vogue.

michael.e.barrett Isobel Lennart wrote "Skirts Ahoy," which is apparently a minor musical in Esther Williams' catalogue. True, it's not dominated by flashy, brassy, spectacular numbers with fountains and trapezes to distract us from the inconsequential story--but rather by the character-driven story with a few modest, distracting numbers. Like Lennart's other scripts I've noticed, including "It Happened in Brooklyn," it's characterized by modesty, sympathy and intelligence. In fact, it looks like someone at the studio decided it needed spicing up because there's a gratuitous number dropped in that looks like it was shot later; it stars an unbilled Debbie Reynolds, Bobby Van and Keenan Wynn.Lennart's scripts are about co-operation and consideration among characters, instead of external conflict and egocentric desires. Three diverse women become WAVES and learn to look out for each other as "good shipmates." It's kind of a bildungsroman where the girls grow up to be new mature adults. The message is spelled out at their graduation when the commander says "You've learned what many girls never have a chance to learn, that there are other people in the world besides yourself, that women don't have to be dependent weak sisters, catty, backbiting, or the natural enemy of each other. In other words, that women can be friends." She's really speaking less to the women than to the film audience. You might think that's a typical wartime message, but it's quite different from how it might have been put: pulling together for the good of the country so our boys can do the tough fighting, etc. The point is about the nature of women and what it means for them, and nothing "larger" than that.Most pertinent is the education of the male lead, Esther's boyfriend, who's almost a supporting character. His conflict is typical of a thousand other movies. He resents Esther's forwardness, he feels his masculinity threatened, and he even speaks in terms of being the hunter chasing rabbits. At this point, in any other movie, she would get in a huff, then learn her lesson and either switch roles demurely, resigning herself to being feminine, or at best "subvert" the lesson by pretending to let him think he's in charge. What does Lennart have her do instead? She takes no for an answer, drops it and never comes near him again. Then at the end, to "finish it" and clear the air before she ships out, she gives him this speech: "I came to apologize. I've been a nuisance and I'm sorry. You see, I thought all you had to do was ask for something and you'd get it. It's always worked before." He says "I wish the whole thing had happened differently." And she says "But I wouldn't have acted any differently. I thought for a while that I could change, that I could try being coy and run and maybe you'd chase me. But I'm really hopeless, completely unteachable, cause if I could get you that way, I wouldn't want ya. I'm not apologizing for the way I acted. That it bothered you, that's what I'm sorry about. I still believe in asking for what I want. What I've learned is not to count on getting it. But that's a lot to learn. It makes things, well it makes things more interesting, if not much fun. Well, goodbye." Of course, this brings him to his senses.Now I ask you: how often do you hear a woman saying something that mature and self-possessed in a studio musical? She's not playing any game, getting emotional, saying she did anything wrong or asking him to forgive her. It was amazing to hear. It indicates that the movie is as much or more about his (and the audience's) education as the gals'. This is aided, as usual, by the helpful behavior of minor characters whom you might think would be antagonistic--the female commander, a gruff officer in a theatre and Esther's uncle. Lennart's world is a warm, supportive one.A typical Lennart grace note is Pop, the old plumber who has four scenes. His entire function as a plot device is served in his first scene, when Esther asks his advice about something. Then she runs across him again in the hall when feeling lonely and out of the blue asks him to dance, so they waltz gently around the corridor.

alberto f. cañas A very dull musical, not comparable with what director Sidney Lanfield had made at 20th.Century Fox in the thirties. No wonder this was his last picture. An example of the difference between what the Freed unit and the Pasternak unit were doing at MGM at the time. Of course, Esther Williams was as beautiful as ever.