A good way to have lotsa fun...and to teach history of film choreography/musicals! I do agree that extra time is spent on swimmer Esther Williams (a bit long) but the film pace picks up and there are...so many wonderful song and dance moments packed into this movie. Many great MGM performers are represented!!! Right now, I'm seeing the still modern 'American in Paris" dance number with Gene Kelly and Leslie Canon. Fabulous.Note...this movie came out in 1974 when people were soured over the Vietnam war, over Watergate. You can tell by the great box office $$$ numbers that old is sometimes fresher than new...as baby boomers discovered what their parents loved at the films. And their parents relived great film moments of their youth!Note: One of the best Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney numbers, I think done by Busby Berkley is wonderful except..the actor/singer/dancers are in blackface (ewww!) Here the teacher could explain why blackface was both a compliment and an insult to black performers.

I have a feeling that I speak for much of my generation, maybe MOST of my generation, when I say that it's hard to take these old musicals seriously. Always happy-go-lucky, they set themselves up to get heckled. I did just that while watching "That's Entertainment!". If you've read my reviews of musicals, then you'll know that I watch them only so that I can throw out the sorts of comments that Mike, Servo and Crow hurl at the crummy movies sent them by Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank on "Mystery Science Theater 3000". Most of the time here, I just blurted out quotes from other movies ("Army of Darkness", "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", etc).Here's a few other things. I noticed that one movie contained a scene of people performing in blackface. "Show Boat" was little more than a whitewash of the Jim Crow south. I recognize the New York song from "On the Town" from the time that "The Simpsons" spoofed it: Bart and Milhouse OD on sugar from an entirely syrup-based Squishee, and sing about Springfield. And then there's "Over the Rainbow". Everyone remembers Judy Garland singing it, but lesser known is that the song's co-writer Yip Harburg later got blacklisted for holding socialist views.Anyway, my favorite movies from Hollywood's golden age are comedies, gangster flicks, and sci-fi/horror flicks*. Most of the movies here would be a lot more interesting if remade my the creators of "South Park". Or if presented by Elvira.*Speaking of horror flicks, "The Wizard of Oz" DID scare me when I was little: that scene where the woman turns into a witch in the tornado freaked me out. That movie and "Ghostbusters" are the only movies that authentically scared me.

Created to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Metro Goldwyn Mayer studios in 1974, this film was a tremendous hit, and inspired two followups. The premise is that simple: show excerpts from the famous musicals of MGM, the studio that created the best of them! The film is broken up into several segments, each one introduced by some of the stars of these marvelous films: Liza Minnelli introduces one on her mother Judy Garland, as does Mickey Rooney. Donald O'Connor introduces one on Esther Williams, etc. This is full of so many goodies, that it would be impossible to name them all within the confines of this review. So many great stars are here: Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Jane Powell, June Allyson, Lena Horne, Ann Miller, and on and on and on and on. Wonderful film, and a reminder of an era when stars and films had class. I was born in the 90's, and I would rather watch any of these gems featured in this film than some mindless action flick or the dime-a-dozen horror films of today. I truly wish we could go back to this kind of film-making today. As Frank Sinatra says in the film, "You can wait around and hope, but I'll tell you; you'll never see the likes of this again." Until that does happen, watch this exuberant film, and bask in the glory of the MGM musicals. Recommended. 10/10.

How times change! Just last year, I declared with complete resolution the utter pointlessness of the movie musical. I considered myself immune to the charms of the genre, lest I have to admit to my friends that my weekend involved watching two skilled performers dancing across a stage. 'Singin' in the Rain (1952)' was the first picture to chip away at my cocoon of ignorance, and the farcical comedic trappings of 'Top Hat (1935)' sealed the deal. It was only then that I rediscovered the delights of childhood favourites 'Mary Poppins (1964)' and 'Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971),' and I've since enjoyed the glamour and spectacle of three more Astaire/Rogers pairings, George Cukor's 'My Fair Lady (1964)' and the unspectacular but solid 'An American in Paris (1951)' and 'High Society (1956).' Throughout the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, one studio stood above all others when it came to producing musicals, and, even today, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) continues to be identified with the glossy Technicolor masterpieces remembered so fondly by film-goers.'That's Entertainment! (1974)' is the first in a trilogy of documentaries tracing the history of MGM as a producer of musicals, telling the story through the compilation of classic musical numbers. What might have been a simple, inconsequential clip-show is offered a vital touch of class through the participation of some of cinema's most beloved stars, including Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Mickey Rooney, Jimmy Stewart, Bing Crosby, Peter Lawford, Elizabeth Taylor, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Liza Minnelli (representing her mother, Judy Garland, who prematurely passed away in 1969), and also some guy named Frank Sinatra. As temporary co-host, each performer offers a carefully-scripted running commentary on the sequences being shown to us, on occasion tossing in details of their own experience. Particularly fascinating is a clip of the 1936 musical 'Born to Dance,' in which Jimmy Stewart demonstrates, for the first and only time, what happens when he is forced into performing a musical number – but at least it's not quite as embarrassing as Clarke Gable's cheesy rendition of "Puttin' on the Ritz!"The most memorable feature of this documentary is how it includes not only the classic musical moments that we all remember, but also a variety of selections that were, as a newcomer, completely unknown to me. I've already developed a list of movie moments that I must experience in their unabridged versions, including Gene Kelly's duet with Jerry Mouse in 'Anchors Aweigh (1945)' and Fred Astaire's mind-boggling waltz across the ceiling in 'Royal Wedding (1951),' which employed a rotating set that inspired a similar sequence in Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).' The actors' introductions, filmed on the soon-to-be-demolished MGM back-lots, are informative and entertaining, though it's rather saddening to see their weathered faces and to know that their glory days were, even then, lost in the past. But perhaps "lost" is the wrong word, because each of these magical musical moments linger in both our memories, and, even when these fail us, in the magnificence of celluloid. Entertainment doesn't get much better than this.