Nice Film, But Better Work Done Elsewhere

Its hard not to like On the Town. The actors really seem to be enjoying themselves and the actresses are just as talented. The plot crammed into a 24 hours period was a little confusing to me. It starts out like an episode of 24 with the time appearing at the bottom of the screen. After 11:30a, it jumps to 8:30p. I expected to spend an entire day with these characters, but they kind of remove 10 hours. Why not just make it about weekend liberty and then you can spread the action out a bit more.

Sinatra and Kelly are fine as always. They have a real chemistry. Jules Munshin as the third sailor is good as he gets much more screen time than in Take Me Out to the Ballgame. The scenes between him and Ann Miller, in my mind, are the best part of the film. The love plot between Kelly and Vera-Ellen were poorly plotted and directed. However, Sinatra and Garrett are almost as good together as they were in TMOTTBG...almost. Their relationship was kind of a rehash of that previous film so it had a "been there, done that" feel to it. I would have preferred if Sinatra had chased Garrett in this film to give it a nice ying-yang quality to the other film.

The scenes in New York are amazing. The location director did an outstanding job of making New York a seventh actor in the film. I've never been to the city, but I did recognize many of the sights.

The musical numbers were a bit lackluster in my opinion with a couple of notable exceptions. "New York, New York" was a winner as was "Come Up to My Place." My personal favorite was the love ballad "You're Awful" that Sinatra sings to Garrett. I think that was such a cute, sweet song.

On the Town has its moments and its obvious everyone is giving their all. I just think Kelly and Sinatra have done better both together and alone.


My memory foam pillow says it can't remember my face. I can tell its lying.