I normally see Steve Martin involved with rather goofy movies like 'Father of the Bride', 'Looney Tunes:Back in Action' or 'The Three Amigos' but I hadn't seen him before in more serious roles as this! The music was quite good but was rather disappointed. Since this is suppose to be a musical, they just lip synced the old songs then use their original voice. Sure Steve Martin has a good voice like why hide it, yknow?The choreography was brilliant, every single actor danced so brilliantly that I forgot they were actors, lol! I thought the storyline was really good but depressing. Steve Martin's character should've left his wife for the ex school teacher. The amount of love they had for each other was great, they needed to run away and not come back! It's too bad they didn't do it from the beginning and that way, things will be better for the couple! It's not a great movie but it's good enough. I give this 8/10!

No matter how much you may hate the depressive story, you simply have to love it for the amazing charm of its ingenious innovative qualities of producing magic by the astounding imagination of the composition of the songs and their presentation. The dreariest of humdrum worlds in the exasperating void of the American depression in Chicago in the 1930s is suddenly whisked away by a song performed like in a dream of marvellous revelation and irresistible cheer. This is cinematographic magic at its best, mixing nightmare reality with the sublimation of poetry and music, and for me the most important character of all, hitting the nail and perfecting the moody setting of the drama, is the stammering Vernel Bagneris as The Accordion Man, a very secondary inferior by-character, but his appearance in all his pathetic misery completes and perfects the poetry. This is indeed a film to watch with very mixed feelings, but the dreamworks could never be more efficient than contrasted with the worst gutter visits of reality.

No, there's nothing jolly about the plot line of this version of the classic British TV series where the characters suddenly break into the original recordings of the 1930's, lip-syncing to the original performers. While there's a lot of the music missing from the T.V. series (particularly memorable to me was a scene where the women tap-dance on the hero's coffin in a fantasy sequence to "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You!"), what remains is pure musical joy even though the plot is no laughing matter. Sheet music salesman Steve Martin is depressed over the state of affairs in his marriage (to the dour Jessica Harper) so he begins an affair with sweet school teacher Bernadette Peters. But evidence points to Martin being a murdering rapist while Peters faces disgrace as a result of the affair.Yes, the depression was depressing, and in addition to Bonnie and Clyde, bread lines and chants of "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?", there was all that wonderful music, through the movies, Broadway and radio. After being turned down for a loan, Martin and the banker suddenly kiss (in Martin's fantasy) and break into "Yes, Yes, My Baby Said Yes Yes" (a song first performed in the Eddie Cantor musical "Palmy Days") while Bernadette quiets her kiddies down with "Love is Good For Anything That Ails You", also sung in "Hit Parade of 1937". Christopher Walken is a pimp who strips to "Let's Misbehave" and Vernal Bagneris shows humanity as the tramp who sings the title song. Broadway veteran John McMartin appears briefly as Peters' boss.Another amazing highlight is the fantasy sequence where Steve and Bernadette turn into Fred and Ginger while watching "Follow the Fleet" and take over "Let's Face the Music and Dance", filmed in black and white with the two wearing the exact same outfits that Fred and Ginger were wearing. It's a magical moment in post-classic era cinema that is rare to be sure. The songs don't really move the plot along (as they aren't meant to) but represent the element of hope Martin keeps hidden away as his life falls apart. The ending is a bit jarring and unbelievable, but was probably necessary to prevent a bad word of mouth from spreading. This would certainly be a project worth considering for Broadway, but then again, with all the other movies having been musicalized, you have to say, why bother?

It's not surprising that Fred Astaire disliked this movie. One of the very few Hollywood characters not to be tarnished by sex scandals. One can only imagine a wounded Judy Garland actually enjoying working with someone of his character and caliber in "Easter Parade." Fred Astaire, despite the sexual innuendos inherent to his plot lines, didn't seem to want to realize his movies were ultimately about sex. Boy gets girl for what purpose? A question Fred Astaire didn't ask or didn't want an answer to.But we know lots of people do sex while listening to Frank Sinatra, Fred Astaire, Nat 'King' Cole, Johhny Mathis, Luther Vandross and so on. Often times doing sex with people they shouldn't be doing sex with and thus Astaire, et.al. become unwitting participants / insturments of evil intention. (While candy is dandy, and liquor is quicker: music is slicker.) Innocence--lost--is core to the movie. Innocence occurs when the elderly principal of the school walks in and asserts he can still remember that grammar school ditty about the calendar. "In January..." Eileen, the teacher who had become Arthur's paramour has told the principal that she is now pregnant with Arthur's child; he gives her a few dollars to help her through but must dimiss her nonetheless. (She has a subsequent abortion--another level of innocence lost.) A following scene is with Christopher Walken in the bar, where he will transform her from innocent teacher to fallen prostitute-- "Let's Misbehave"--thus completing Arthur's transformation of her from innocent to fallen.Arthur, as the viewer knows, didn't murder anyone so the 'Hollywood' ending of him walking away with his now redeemed heroine is perfectly perfect in a bizarre way. The viewer is not innocent. The viewer walks into the theater knowing that the world is not nice, people are not nice, people are downright evil. All of this thanks to the evening news. But even in 1936--the Tiger Woods debacle hearkens to an even earlier Fatty Arbuckle disaster--1921, a disaster played out in newspapers of the day. (Arbuckle was found innocent of murder after three trials but his career was effectively ended.)So Arthur's sordid world matches the real sordid world forcing loss of innocence; but this being Hollywood--the whole point of Hollywood--none of it is real in the way the evening news is real. (And of course, not real to the TV viewer in the way that, say, famine is real in Biafra. That's why we use words like 'sympathy' / 'empathy' and 'pathos' / 'bathos'.) The film is masterful, as always, in spite of the principals, who in this case were without exception excellent and the viewer cannot imagine anyone else playing those roles.