A truckload of "highlights," over the decades, from the MGM musicals. In the heap, there are plentiful pleasures to be found. Notably: Fred Astaire dancing with a hat rack in Royal Wedding, Donald O'Connor running up the walls in Singin' in the Rain, Clark Gable doing a rowdy song-and-dance in Idiot's Delight, Esther Williams or Mickey Rooney doing anything in anything. However, there is a certain sense of anxiety about savoring the goodies on display, because of the sudden, sometimes premature fadeouts, and because of the big-name narrators who sometimes talk right over the film clips (of these, Mickey Rooney and James Stewart are the most trustable, while Liza Minnelli and Liz Taylor, even though playing themselves, reaffirm their eminence among the world's worst actresses). The information dispensed is in eyedropper doses and is composed of equal parts clichés, generalities, and brazen untruths. We are to understand, out of all this, that the credit for the MGM musicals belongs first and foremost to the studio itself, second to the stars (especially Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Judy Garland, and Judy Garland), and third to a few household-word directors (a "genius" such as Busby Berkeley). The studio's self-congratulation seems a bit excessive -- for instance, the inscription "Beginning Our Next 50 Years" next to the MGM emblem -- for a movie rooted so deeply and distantly in the past. The selected clips never come near to the year, nor to the raunchiness and snarliness, of Elvis and Ann-Margret in Viva Las Vegas, one of many slighted MGM musicals. Indeed, second-guessing the selection of clips is probably the most lingering pleasure of this grab-bag movie. For the most part, in keeping with the MGM image and the salesmanship tone of this salute, the standard for selection seems to have been the "bigger the better." (1974) — Duncan Shepherd
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