Charles Herold (cherold) Royal Wedding is a must-see film simply for two of Astaire's best solo numbers, one involving a hat rack and the other involving the defiance of gravity. There are also a couple of solid number with his co-star Jane Powell, one a bit of bad-boy shtick and the other a very funny dance on a rocking boat.The movie begins well. Astaire and Powell are a sibling dance team off to England. Inveterate flirt Powell meets her match in an English lord, while Astaire falls for a pretty dancer (played by one of Winston Churchill's daughters!).The early scenes are notable for an unusually casual approach to romance, but of course things get serious later on. And as they do, the frothy start gives way to the grind of a standard Astaire story complete with mild obstacle and easy resolution.Powell sings several forgettable songs in her annoying operatic voice and there are some other decent dance numbers, including one set in Haiti that pretends Haiti that ignores that the country is almost entirely populated by the descendants of African slaves. There's also a lot of English people going "pip pip," and I have no idea if that's any more accurate than the Haiti stuff. It comes across as rather cartoonish, but who knows?Anyway, it's a fun movie. Not great, but enjoyable.

moonspinner55 American brother and sister song-and-dance act sets sail for England after their manager gets them a London booking on the eve of Princess Elizabeth's royal nuptials. Stereotypical Brits litter the phony, contrived scenario (one waits--not in vain--for the first "Jolly good show!" or the proverbial walk in the fog). In the leads, Fred Astaire and Jane Powell are a perky, polite sibling pair; she puts her Yankee beaus on hold to be romanced by a bird-chasing Lord (Peter Lawford, as British a Lord as M-G-M could buy) while Fred fancies Sarah Churchill, a performer whose idea of romance is to dance on the ceiling (cue the next musical number!). Astaire dances (very well) and acts (not so well), while Jane hits the high notes. It's rather a dismaying picture without a single good song. Even Mr. Astaire's solo numbers look like flagrant chapter stops in the bland action. ** from ****

tedg Musicals sort of blend into a blur, especially those built around Fred Astair. All the stories are disposable, and you remember them more or less by who his partner was.This one is different. I does stick to the mature template of how the dances fit in: half the dances are part of a show within a show. The other half spring from the story in that fantastic manner we accept as a matter of narrative convention.The dances, though, some of them are pretty darn memorable.To appreciate this, you need to understand the challenge of filming dance. We have the "old" convention in spots here: the camera is in some sort of theater seat and watches a performance on a stage, sometimes a literal stage. There's nothing cinematic about it: you could see the same thing is a live performance.The challenge is in what to do that works with the dance and at the same time leverages cinema, presumably to engage us. The production team here did some rather amazing things with space. I don't know who to credit, but there's some genius here.The idea is by steps bonding the dance to notions of artificial space, the actual containing space. It starts with a simple device: Fred dancing with a hat rack. Its a strange thing, halfway between being a partner and an interaction with the world.Then on a ship, he and Jane dance on a floor that shifts. The notion of an unstable gravity is a pretty amazing notion because Fred's effects all depend on his relationship to the ground and what's on it. The floor shifts and he accommodates, amid moving pulls, rolling oranges and shifting furniture.Then the most memorable dance sequence shifts this on its head, mastering gravity: he dances in a room starting on the floor. Then dances on the walls and ceiling. The effect is accomplished by having the room imperceptibly rotate and the camera with it. But its an extraordinary achievement the way he plays with it. It isn't as wild as Gene Kelly playing with and in the rain because it is more precise and intellectual. But it is a real thrill. You need to see it.Later, in the stage show, there's an acknowledgment of all this, a production number about place, with a map of a place that turns transparent to reveal the place itself.+++++++ There's a strange background here, the actual royal wedding of the period. The tone of that was supposed to be so obvious and strong that merely being immersed in it would overcome hesitations to wed. Its so flat today it shocks, especially the actual footage of the rather ridiculous pomp.(The woman playing Fred's paramour is Winston Churchill's daughter, an odd combination of mannish face, red hair, terrific legs, a studied grace and little charm. The man playing the beau of Fred's sister was one of Hollywood's most promiscuous empty souls — he married a Kennedy.) Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Isaac5855 ROYAL WEDDING was a colorful and splashy MGM musical that turned out to be one of Fred Astaire's best offerings, despite the initial trouble insuring a leading lady for the project. The film was originally planned for Fred and June Allyson, who had to drop out when she learned she was pregnant. Judy Garland was then approached, as the studio had been anxious to reunite her with Astaire since their triumph in EASTER PARADE, but Judy began her now-famous behavior patterns of showing up late on the set all the time or not at all, and Astaire was not having that, so Jane Powell was finally brought in to take the role. Astaire and Powell play Tom and Ellen Bowen, a brother and sister song and dance team who have been tapped to perform at a royal wedding in London (I believe it's the Queen who has requested they perform), so they take a cruise ship to London. On the ship Ellen meets a debonair playboy (Peter Lawford) and at the London auditions, Tom falls for a dancer (Sarah Churchill)who he casts in the chorus of his show. This breezy plot provides the backdrop for several showstopping numbers, the most famous of which is "You're all the World to Me" in which Astaire, while staring at a photo of Churchill, is so head over heels in love that he dances on the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. Movie historians have argued for years about how this scene was done and frankly, I don't care...it's such a joyous expression of love through dance that nothing else really matters. Astaire also has a solo called "Sunday Jumps" where his partner is a hat rack and, as always, Fred makes his partner look good. There's also a showstopping duet with Astaire and Powell called "How Could you Believe me when I said I loved you when you know I've been a liar all my life?" which features Fred as a slick gangster and a surprising Powell, as a brunette, gum-chewing floozy. Liner notes from the soundtrack album claim that this song was written by composers Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane in a limo on the way to the studio one day. Despite a wooden performance from Sarah Churchill, daughter of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, this musical is a joy and one of the best from the MGM stable.