Let's Dance [VHS]

Let's Dance [VHS]
by Norman Z. McLeod

Let's Dance [VHS]

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Category: VHS Video
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Product details

Actor: Betty Hutton, Fred Astaire, Lucile Watson, Roland Young, Ruth Warrick
Director: Norman Z. McLeod
Cinematographer: George Barnes
Editor: Ellsworth Hoagland
Producer: Robert Fellows
Writer: Allan Scott
Writer: Dane Lussier
Writer: Maurice Zolotow
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
Running Time: 112 minutes
Release Date: 1996-07-02
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Paramount
Studio: Paramount

VHS Movie Reviews of Let's Dance [VHS]

Movie Review: Great entertainment!
Summary: 5 Stars

This movie is a great family movie. The songs are very catchy and the dancing is great. Definitely a must see if you like musicals.

Movie Review: PARAMOUNT IN THE 19th CENTURY ..!!!!!
Summary: 5 Stars

What does it take for this studio to get into the 21st century and put their movies on DVD? There is a block of musical lovers and Betty Hutton lovers that want to buy this movie but we dont own VCRs anymore! Besides anything with this cast has to be fun ,but not on VCR! At least not on my plasma tv!!!

Movie Review: Not too bad, not too good, and it's definitely Betty Hutton's movie
Summary: 3 Stars

Let's Dance is a Betty Hutton movie. Fred Astaire may have equal billing, but Hutton dominates the picture. Her mixture of tomboy boisterousness and unrelenting brashness makes the casual and easy-going Astaire seem as relevant as Percy Kilbride trying to catch up with Marjorie Main. During the Forties, audiences loved Betty Hutton. She was hugely insecure, which probably accounted for her need to give 150 per cent, when 90 per cent would have served her better.

With Let's Dance, It's almost startling to see how Fred Astaire has difficulty establishing his presence against Hutton's unremitting energy. It doesn't help that the songs, written by Frank Loesser, are tailored more to Hutton's strengths than they are to Astaire's. None of the songs are noteworthy, and they often blend heavy rhythmic repetition, loudness and jitterbug style with ample opportunity for Hutton to mug and exaggerate. Even the one romantic song, "Why Fight the Feeling," is given to Hutton first to deliver as a comic vamp. Loesser had written for Hutton before and he knew her strengths.

The story is about Kitty McNeil (Betty Hutton), an entertainer for the troops, who marries a rich, socialite Army pilot in London in 1945. He dies shortly after, shot down, but not before Leaving Kitty with child. Fast forward five years later when Kitty and her son are living with the boy's very rich great grandmother. The woman, snobbish and high in society, believes Kitty is unsuitable as a mother to the boy. But Kitty escapes the mansion with her son and, after a few tribulations, gets a job as a cigarette girl in a nightclub. But guess what? Her partner during the war years had been Don Elwood (Fred Astaire). They had sort of loved each other. They met by accident in a cheap diner after Kitty had kidnapped her son. It was Don who helped her get the job in the nightclub where Don did some dancing while he tried to establish himself as a financial whiz. The story goes on and on. For Kitty, she must fight off her son's great grandmother and the woman's lawyers. She has Don to help her. Of course, all the people in the nightclub, from the owner to the cooks to the dancers, fall for the little boy and try to help Kitty, too. All the while she and Don are edgily moving closer...a kind of boy and girl love each other, boy loses girl, then repeat three times. Finally, boy gets girl along with a five-year-old stepson.

But this is an Astaire movie, sort of, so what of the singing and dancing? "I Can't Stop Talking About Him" is the opening number, sung and danced before the troops in 1945 by Kitty and Don. Kitty is in a bright pink dress, Don in drab Army brown. Your eyes tend to focus on Hutton and the dress. Hutton sings the song and she and Astaire dance. It's all in the Hutton style, loud. Astaire dances a rehearsal number with two pianos, clambering over and under them and playing some piano himself. "Jack and the Beanstalk" is a hip version of the old fairy tale which Astaire sings to Kitty's little boy. It's not that bad, and Astaire gets to make a long bean stalk out of a newspaper while singing it, but it's little more than specialty material. "Oh, Them Dudes" is a raucous cowboy song and dance with Hutton and Astaire gussied up like old-time mustachioed cowboys. Astaire did this kind of thing better with Judy Garland in Easter Parade's "Couple of Swells" and would do it better again with Jane Powell in Royal Wedding's "How Could You Believe Me...." "Why Fight the Feeling," Astaire has said, was a song he liked a lot. In Let's Dance, it just doesn't get a chance to establish itself. The movie's finale, "Tunnel of Love," is another loud production number tailored much more to Hutton than Astaire. They sing and they dance, but Hutton is mugging all the way.

Let's Dance features some pleasant comic turns by Roland Young and Melville Cooper, as well as solid character actors such as Ruth Warrick, Shepperd Strudwick, Barton MacLane and George Zucco. The movie has never been released on DVD as far as I know. You might find copies around of the old VHS tape. For Astaire completeists, it's a must have. It's one of his weakest movies, and very much for fans of Betty Hutton.

Movie Review: A Fun Show
Summary: 4 Stars

Kitty (Betty Hutton) is a long-time performing partner with Don (Fred Astaire), a man she has loved but has had many a scuffle. By the time he comes around to proposing, she's already married and on her way to being a mother. Fast forward five years later when she is stuck in her late husband's family's home, an illustrious group from Boston. A showgirl at heart, Kitty is bored and uncomfortable. What's more is that she can't raise her son Richie (Gregory Moffett) they way she wants to. The only escape is, well, escape. She sneaks away with Richie to New York where she runs into Don and attempts to start a new life up on the stage. Unfortunately, the little boy's great-grandmother refuses to let a child grow up that way and tries to take him away.

Although Hutton and Astaire are two very different personalities, they play well off of each other. Each gets a chance to shine in the musical numbers. The opener "Can't Stop Talking About Him" starts strong and displays how adept a dancer Astaire was. "Them Dudes," however, shows off Hutton's ability to spice up a silly song. "Jack and the Beanstalk" gives Astaire a chance to do the same. There are some more mediocre numbers like the one where Astaire dances on a piano. Although some of the moves are impressive, the restricted space makes the scene a bit dull.

Movie Review: Dancing as an Equal
Summary: 4 Stars

It was with mixed expectations that I bought and watched this movie. One reviewer said Betty was no Ginger and another said Betty was so good you watched her instead of Fred. As a long- time lover of musicals I must agree with the latter opinion. Fred's other partners (Ginger, Judy and Cyd come to mind) were women who made it their business to blend as smoothly as possible into Fred's style, highlighting his moves so that you were more liable to watch him than his women. They knew how to disappear (as women did in those days)into the male's technique. But Betty does it differently. She dances with Fred as an equal and because she is so darned good, you do indeed watch her instead of him.

It's almost as if he had the flu the entire movie. His cocky swagger and seductive smile are missing. His solo pieces are half-assed and his partnered dances make him seem thrown for a loss. He appears to not know how to dance with a woman who takes up the same space he does. Had Betty been Gene or Donald, there would have been no problem; Fred would have known how to relate. You can see the proof of this in the Cowboy number where Betty is a cowpoke. That being said, a sickly Fred is better than almost anyone else on a good day. I had to laugh when the greatgrandma calls Astaire "young man." Fred looked 40 at age 20 and 40 at age 60!

Betty is delightful in this movie. I didn't remember how beautiful she was. Ginger danced as if she practiced hard and has finally got it just right. Betty is a natural who expresses joy in every step and so looks spontaneous. The movie's worth watching, esp for the opening number. Betty acts better than Grable or Lana Turner, substituting their saccarine flavor with genuine sweetness. Her "over the top" behavior in other movies gives one pause. This came to define her and serious roles were then denied her. Pity. One wonders why she undermined herself as an actress in that way. Perhaps she never knew she was that good. What did "blond bombshells" do back then? What they were told, I'm sure. There was Mae West and Marilyn, two who attempted to carve their own path through Hollywood and both succeeded but at great cost. Betty shoulda been a contender, and this movie shows it.

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