That’s Entertainment! ***** (1974, Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly, Peter Lawford, Elizabeth Taylor, Liza Minnelli, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra, James Stewart) – Classic Movie Review 6294

Writer-director Jack Haley Jnr’s 1974 film is a golden celebration of MGM’s wonderful musicals in 50 years of its movies, made to celebrate the studio’s golden jubilee. It was ironically MGM’s biggest hit for many years, so popular that there was an immediate sequel and a third movie a decade later.

It is a breathtaking selection of sequences, taken at breakneck pace, with hardly a second wasted in all its 132 minutes. The only complaint is that the clips are mostly cut and tailed when you really want to see the entire sequence.

There are so many brilliant sequences to marvel at, with Fred Astaire (clip from The Band Wagon), Gene Kelly (clips from Take Me Out to the Ball Game, Singin’ in the Rain and An American in Paris) and Judy Garland (clips from The Wizard of Oz and Summer Stock) featuring strongly, but my favourite moment is Fred Astaire’s dancing on the walls and ceiling in the clip from Royal Wedding.

The musical sequences are introduced in turn in pleasant if none-too-incisive commentaries by Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly, Peter Lawford, Liza Minnelli, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra, James Stewart and Elizabeth Taylor. But the then surviving MGM great stars are all there on screen and that is what really matters for a celebration.

That’s Entertainment, Part II follows in 1975 and That’s Entertainment! III follows in 1994.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6294

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