Good concept, poorly executed.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I am not a student of film, but I enjoyed it. Different people have different tastes, therefore different likes and dislikes. I think any "reviewer" that look for nits to pick an/or technicalities to point out, especially in older movies, should make his/her own movies. In addition, I don't think a review is valid if it is based on a personal dislike of of someone in the movie. Why does it matter if a movie follows a book to the letter, unless it claimed to follow the book? I think movies are mostly for entertainment and/or story telling. If it claims to be based on facts, then nit-pick, if it isn't factual. Otherwise, it is for entertaining the viewer.

The performers do not sing Cole Porter the way the best of singers can sing Cole Porter. Doris Day in "Lullaby of Broadway" sings "Just one of those things" wearing a tuxedo in a way that outshines Maurice Chevalier. Bob Hope singing "You do something to me" excels in a way that Louis Jordan cannot. Frank Sinatra and Shirley McClain singing "Let's do it" ends up as tepid as it gets as compared to almost anyone else's rendition. That these are all masters of the singer's craft makes for an astounding realization--the knack for singing a Cole Porter song is not for everyone or for every vehicle. One wonders how other singers handle interpretation of these songs in the same play. The movie was disappointing because the performances were disappointing.

Cole Porter had a mixed bag with his last group of Broadway musicals after Ethel Merman moved onto Irving Berlin. Only one of them, "Kiss Me Kate", was a smash hit both critically and financially, and two ("Can- Can" and "Silk Stockings") were fairly successful. Several flops ("Around the World in 80 Days" and the underrated "Out of this World") made Broadway life difficult for the ailing composer. For the movie version of "Can-Can", the basic story remained but much of the score changed with a hot box office cast brought into play the leads.The legal system is battling the nightclub area of Monmarte with women's groups protesting against the allegedly dirty dance. But the judges enjoy it just as much as the tourists and locals who go to see the jumps, twists and splits of the sexy chorines lead by Shirley MacLaine. Among the legal eagles involved are "Gigi" co-stars Maurice Chevalier and Louis Jourdan, with MacLaine supported by none other than "Pal Joey", Frank Sinatra, re-teaming them after "Some Came Running". An overlong movie is broken up by a perky musical score, not one of Porter's best on stage, but a few songs stand out as classics.The lyrics have been taken out of the title song which MacLaine, Juliet Prowse and the Can-Can girls perform with great exertion. "C'est Magnifique", "I Love Paris" and "Live and Let Live" have all become standards, and of the other lesser known songs, MacLaine's drunken "Come Along With Me" is the most amusing. There's an Adam and Eve ballet, an Apache Dance (of course!) and the wittiness of Porter's lyrics which reflects his "Parisian" era seen earlier on Broadway in shows like "Fifty Million Frenchmen" and "Paris" which claimed some of his more risqué lyrics. All in all, there's nothing special about this likable but over-stuffed piece of fluff, but the performers all put their best foot forward (or dancing shoes) and the direction by Walter Lang is swift in spite of the running time. While this may not stand out as a classic among the golden age of movie versions of Broadway musicals, it certainly doesn't rank up there with some of the disasters, either.

Well, Can-Can is not a total loss, but it's not a 10-star gem of a movie either, but - it IS entertaining, but the biggest problem that I see with the film is that everyone looks like they're embarrassed to be in the movie with each other because no one is actually looking at each other when they're saying their lines. Look at the scene where Shirley McClain is making up the story as to how Louis Jourdan was trying to overcome her sexually and the scene goes something like this:SHIRLEY: And I fought him and fought him and stuggled, but what could a person do? MAURICE: [embarrassed to say] Uh - submit - of course! SHIRLEY: [slightly glances at thim and them says loudly] SUBMIT?The film just kinda lays there and doesn't do anything. Come on - it's not Gigi! It was really a re-uniting of Louie and Maurice because of their hit movie Gigi and that's about where the uniting ends, but there are some highlights to the film. Shirley McClaine's apache dance with the guys while Louis Jourdan looks on is a great number, and the Adam and Eve Ballet is quite good and Shirley's line before the ballet is wonderful when she says something like this: "Be it known that sin may have been invented in the Garden of Eden, but it was perfected in Monemart!"It just seems like all they're doing in the film is walking through their dress rehearsal without putting any oomph into the acting, and at the same time the some of the costumes are so tacky that they look like we did as kids when we played dress-up as adults! And, look at the scene before Maurice and Louis sing "Live and Let Live". It looks like it was inserted on purpose so that they could have the opportunity to sing the song, and the scene in which Maurice sings "It Was Just One of Those Things". Even that looks like it was inserted on purpose just to give him a chance to sing a song, but the songs are great even though most of them were never in the original broadway play such as "You Do Something To Me", "Let's Do It", and "It Was Just One of Those Things", "It's Alright With Me" [which is slow and a very boring rendition], and oddly enough "I Love Paris" a duet between Frank Sinatra and Maurice Chevalier was deleted from the movie and only heard in the the original soundtrack album, and the Oveture and beginning Credits of the video, that is if you have the first video version of Can-Can in which you get the Oveture, Intermission Music, and Exit Music with all the musical numbers letter-boxed, and why they deleted "I Love Paris" from the movie is beyond me since it was the hit of the show. Again, Hollywood has been known to do some dumb stuff!Juliet Prowse's big number "Maids From France" is quite good, but it's obvious why she's in the scene with Frank Sinatra when he sings "It's Alright With Me" because at that time they were having an affair, and I guess if it was alright with them it should be alright with us, but later he would marry Mia Farrow and since Frank was Italian it was only obvious that his kids would call her "Uh-Mama Mia"!Anyway, I sure wish they would re-release the original video version of "Can-Can" or a whole widescreen version on D.V.D.. Other songs from the Broadway Show were deleted from the movie such as "Never Give Anything Away" "Al-e-Vou-Zon" [which is only used in Shirley McClains apache dance as a melody] "There Is No Trick To A Can Can" which is just used as a melody for the Can-Can at the end of the movie, and again even though they deleted a singing version of the hit of the play "I Love Paris", at least they use the melody of it in the Adam and Eve Ballet, but Shirley McClains drunken version of "Come Along With Me" is delightful, and here goes the insanity of Hollywood again, at the end of the film when the Paddy-Wagon is pulling away with Shirley and Frank in it - the chorus is singing the last lines of "I Love Paris"!So - why didn't Louis get Shirley in the end? Well, it's obvious that she was in love with Frank Sinatra all the time, but more than that; "Once a Rat Packer; always a Rat Packer"!