Good movie but grossly overrated

Fantastic!

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) This competent if unremarkable film was directed by Dorothy Arzner, Hollywood's one female director of note between the silent years and Ida Lupino. It's a package of different kinds of dance numbers, from show girl to burlesque to high art ballet. The thread that keeps it going is the usual: girls trying to make it in one show or another.Lucille Ball, famous for her television shows of the 1950s and 60s, might seem to be making an early appearance in this 1940 song and dance drama. But she had made fifty (fifty!) films before this one. She's no a remarkable dancer by any means, nor singer, but she has personality to spare, and she's fun, period. She plays the worldly girl who will dance anywhere, anyhow. In contrast is the Maureen O'Hara character, sweet and restrained. She's rather humiliated in the movie, and you can feel her pain, but it's a forced contrast.Musical numbers intersperse the thin plot, and those might or might not be your taste. I found even the ballet, which looked like a serious ballet troupe in action, pedestrian. And it was poorly filmed: the camera sat at the edge of the stage and watched. In truth, the movie as a whole was functional, not reaching for the stars, and not getting any. The one surprise, for me, was the ease and presence of Louis Hayward as a kind of good guy leading man who appeared now and then to properly show his love for O'Hara's struggling character.

Amidst the boy's club of classical Hollywood cinema, Dorothy Arzner's Dance, Girl, Dance is notable as a rare female vision. While the film's behind-the-scenes-at-the-girly-show subject matter might have been sensationalized in other hands--"NOT SUITABLE FOR GENERAL EXHIBITION" brags the poster--Arzner unceremoniously mutes the male gaze throughout: rather than command her camera to linger leeringly on the female form, she chooses to communicate her dancers' eroticism through,for example, an unmoving shot of a man's eyeballs.The film's characters are faced with two modes of femininity to embrace, neither particularly appealing: Lucille Ball's Bubbles exploits her sexuality so that she might latch on to--and this is a direct quote, and I s*** you not--a "great big capitalist;" Maureen O'Hara's Judy maintains a healthy self-respect and work ethic to absolutely no avail.Dance, Girl, Dance will be entertaining to contemporary audiences for its antiquated weirdnesses-- Louis Hayward in particular is delightfully insane as Mr. Harris, completely derailing the movie every time he's on screen--but the movie's real power is in its harrowingly cynical finale: our protagonist is literally forced into a chair and told not to think by a patriarchal businessmen, and through the least convincing laughter I've ever seen on screen, Judy laments how easy her life could have been had she subjugated herself sooner. I don't know if Arzner was trying to make a statement on the impossibility of maintaining a strong female identity in male-dominated culture, but that is certainly what she did. -TK 9/2/10

This is a real typical early '40's musical, that only this time isn't focusing on signing but dancing. Not that it makes much difference to the story though and the movie progresses just in the same manner as you would expect from a genre movie such as this one. Not that this makes the movie a bad one but it of course also doesn't exactly make this an original one either.Of course nothing really happens as a surprise within this movie but I guess that is what makes this movie also perfectly enjoyable and good to watch, for the genre fans in particular. It however can't be really seen as the best movie within its genre, fore it has some problems.One problem of the movie are its characters. There are some good actors within the movie but due to the writing, most characters feel very messy within the movie. You also just don't really start to care about any of them, also since Maureen O'Hara, who plays the movie's main lead, plays her character far too naive and friendly. You would almost cheer for the more 'bitchy' part played by Lucille Ball who does a surprising much better job.Making it in the big town as a ballerina dancer in my book also isn't already the most compelling or interesting concept to start off with. Combine with this all the usual formulaic ingredients and you have a very average movie in basically every regard.Yet it's a perfectly watchable movie, perhaps because of the very reason that you already know what is going to happen all in this movie. After all, more important thing of course also remains not what is going to happen but how its going to happen. In that regard this movie simply does not fail, for it brings some good quality entertainment that is brought well to the screen by female director Dorothy Arzner and acted out well by most of its principal cast members.7/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Though I take issue with the feminist slant on this film (the fact that it continually glamorizes objectification and ogling the female form/body while no masculine counterpoint is truly offered) I still feel this is an alright film with a fun story and a few great scenes. Arguing over the performances of Maureen O'Hara and Lucille Ball seem ridiculous to me, given that they were explicitly coming from different places within the studio "star" system. What is perhaps of interest is the fact that the director is female, that there is a violent "cat-fight" between LB and MO and, that lesbianism is directly addressed. Worthy, at least, of a rent.