Let me say to begin with that I really like both Leslie Caron and Fred Astaire. That however is really where it ends too as the story doesn't work. I have read the other reviews that he was 55 and she 24 but in the film She is 18, however old he is, and he is using his money to manipulate her. Yes I get that it's a light hearted film but wait, what if it were your daughter? My second question is - why America? why not send her to Paris to study - instead she diminishes her own style and personality by going to a US college. I couldn't see the reasoning behind the film, apart from old man meets girl, and I'm sad that two great talents - not to mention all the worthy supporting players - were wasted in this. Enough to make you sleep? Afraid I did, and missed a small part of it. No regrets there.

In the mid 1950s, Astaire inexplicably turned into Cary Grant, romancing women less than half his age in this film and his next, "Funny Face." In this musical based on the popular children's novel, he is a 50-something millionaire who sponsors a French teenager's education in the U.S. and then falls in love with her. As in "Funny Face," where Astaire lusted after Audrey Hepburn, it is not only embarrassing but downright icky watching this May-December romance. The musical numbers are actually not bad, but the film far outstays its welcome at a running time of over two hours. Caron plays basically the same role she did in "An American in Paris" and "Gigi."

Jean Webster's novel Daddy Long Legs has certainly been popular enough ever since it was written in 1912. First a play the following year that starred a young Ruth Chatterton, than film versions with Mary Pickford as a silent and an early sound film starring Janet Gaynor. There was even a Dutch language version in the Thirties and a couple of years back South Korea filmed a version of the story. Still the best known one is the one with the singing and dancing of Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron.Johnny Mercer who can well lay claim to being the greatest lyricist America ever produced occasionally wrote the music as well for some songs, an example being I'm An Old Cowhand. Another one he did both music and lyrics for is Dream which was interpolated into this otherwise original score and sung by the Pied Pipers. Mercer did music and lyrics for the rest of the score as well which included the Oscar nominated Something's Gotta Give for Best Song. It lost in 1955 to Love Is A Many Splendored Thing.I've got a feeling that Jean Webster took as her inspiration for the Daddy Long Legs Story the marriage of Grover Cleveland. The future President of the United States was practicing law in Buffalo, New York when his law partner, one Oscar Folsom, was killed in a carriage accident leaving a widow and small daughter. Cleveland took over the guardianship and raised young Frances Folsom and when he was president in his first term he married young Ms. Folsom when she came of age in the White House.In this updating of the story, Fred Astaire is a millionaire diplomat on a trade mission to France after World War II. The car breaks down near an orphanage and while there spots and becomes enchanted with young Leslie Caron. He becomes her unseen benefactor, putting her through college in America and she calls him, Daddy Long Legs. Of course like the Clevelands the March/July romance commences.Daddy Long Legs gave Darryl Zanuck an opportunity to try and respond to MGM's classic ballet in An American In Paris, where not coincidentally Leslie Caron danced with Gene Kelly. In an incredible generosity of spirit it's not Fred who dances, but Caron. In her fantasy Astaire just ambles through. It's a nice number but doesn't come close to what Kelly achieved. It's interesting to speculate what might have happened had Fred danced here.Thelma Ritter has some nice lines herself as the usual wisecracking girl Friday and for once Fred Clark is a good guy as Astaire's factotum. That must have been a welcome change for him.If you should be with your beloved watching Daddy Long Legs, you can bet as sure as you live, Something's Gotta Give, Something's Gotta Give, Something's Gotta Give.

Let's begin with the obvious: the complaints about the age difference between Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron. Yes, there is one. But I think there's a night-and-day difference between this film and, say, 'Charade' or 'Entrapment' when the leading man is grandfatherly and the leading lady is a sweet young thing, and we're not supposed to notice. The brilliant thing about DLL is that the age difference, or discrepancy, is front and center at the plot of the film. But the film broaches this rather sticky material in a very chaste and innocent way. After seeing her from afar as a teenager, Astaire's courtship with Caron becomes anonymous. For two years. The film's first masterstroke comes in the guise of Thelma Ritter acting as an armchair Cupid. Through a gentle push on her part we begin to see the pair finally interact. (And when they first dance together, it isn't even real.) Astaire also attempts nobility- several times!! But everything is in an elegant and tasteful courtship, leading up to the stunning rooftop turn of "Something's Gotta Give." I didn't like the Roland Petit ballet towards the end of the film as much as others did, just because I felt that the point of loss had been beaten to death. But the ending is especially fine because two love stories resolve instead of just one. And how cool is it to dance with someone on your roof terrace, step into your hat, spin into your wrap, and dance out the front door?!!