Not to get all serious, but...

This really is an innovative film, not really given enough credit. It was perhaps the first major musical of the studio era (in fact, one of the first films of any genre of that era) to have an extensive location shoot on the streets of New York. The whole film has a wonderful, post-modern sense of humor to it (all the references to other MGM films and pop culture), and the musical numbers are staged in a very innovative way, with the amazing use of Technicolor also a major plus.

This shows what a brilliant director Gene Kelly was, and also that some of the most innovative techniques in the cinema at this time were going on in the musical genre.

Matt