On the Town

1949 musical comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Horny sailors attempt to have their cake and eat it, too, as they catch all the sights of New York City and try to get laid simultaneously.

I meant to watch this during my New York City Movie Fest but never got around to it. I've been on a Frank Sinatra kick lately and thought it was time to give it a spin. I enjoyed seeing Frank and Gene Kelly do their things because they both do their things very well. Kelly gives himself two nice dance sequences which still, especially in a sound-stage situation like we have here, give me identical feelings that I have when watching really good kung-fu fighting sequences. There's a lot of prancing and false starts, but the scene where he's wooing Vera-Ellen works well, and a completely unnecessary scene near the end where they summarize the entire movie for no reason is close to electric. Sinatra gets a few songs, and the other guy--Jules Munshin--adds zaniness (I saw that word somewhere associated with him; apparently he brought the zaniness), but it never really meshes. The songs did nothing for me. In fact, I saw this less than 24 hours ago, though admittedly with other stuff on my mind, and I can't remember any of the songs except for the "New York" one because it was in there twice. Nothing else really connects here except for some great shots of New York City and Ann Miller's reference to her desire for "prehistoric dick."