It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

What a classic film. We have a tradition of watching Easter films over the long weekend in Australia and this is always a top pick! Fun, bubbly movie featuring two great talents. Enjoyable little musical, even if the musical numbers aren't the most memorable. The movie makes a huge mistake though; near the end it gives the (supposedly) 2nd string Ann Miller the better musical numbers, and give Garland and Astaire only one musical number together, "A couple of swells." A terrible number to portray Astaire and Garland's couple dance chemistry. And Garland's character falls totally in love with Astaire though their dancing. There's no questioning their individual talent, and together Garland and Astaire are a great all-time dance couple. Ann Miller surprisingly gets the best dance numbers, and the music is very memorable. Easter Parade is probably the best of the musicals I've watched; but I think I can watch anything with either Astaire or Garland in it. Their personalities are able to elevate the material that's given to them, in Easter Parade and also pretty much in every movie of theirs that I've seen.

I know that "Easter Parade" has a reasonably high IMDb score and a lot of folks liked it, but it left me flat. I for one wanted to like it, as I adore Fred Astaire and try to watch all his films. But, unfortunately, while the film looked nice, it lacked the sort of stuff that made many of Astaire's movies great. Sure, it had singing and dancing but it also had Astaire playing a rather unlikable guy, lacked charm and style as well as having way too much singing! Too much singing? Yep--or at least the TYPE of song and dance numbers were not all that great. So here, instead of having Astaire sing and dance because life is grand (the BEST reason to sing and dance in a film), it was because he and his partner were professional dancers on stage. And, insanely, MGM decided not only to show their dance numbers but practically ALL the other numbers as well. It made for a variety show sort of film but it also made the plot seem rather unimportant and also dragged the film to a grinding halt. For example, after Judy Garland and Fred profess their love for each other--there were several dance numbers that had NOTHING to do with this. Too often, the film failed to work towards enhancing the plot--and the songs were just there. It's a shame, too, as the plot wasn't bad and Fred and Judy could have made this a terrific film--but the writing and direction just did everything to make the film drag. Heck, after a while, I found myself just wanting it to end already! And that is NOT what I expect from a Fred Astaire film!

Some old-time Hollywood musicals have a style which plays well in any era. To others time has been less kind as they come across as relics of a time gone by. Unfortunately Easter Parade is one of those relics. It was a smashing success in 1948 but all these years later it doesn't play very well at all. The plot is too slight, the pacing is too slow, the songs are too dull, the whole package just doesn't work. Now any movie starring Fred Astaire and Judy Garland isn't going to be all bad. Astaire's dancing and Garland's singing are as great as you imagine they would be. Not for nothing were they film legends. But all in all this is a film which makes a rather poor showcase for the renowned talents of its famous stars.The bare-bones plot involves Astaire's character of Don having his dance team partner leave him to take up a solo offer. "I'll show her" he thinks, stating that he can take any old girl and make her into a star. Any old girl turns out to be Hannah Brown, played by Garland. Don and Hannah form a new partnership which struggles to get off the ground. But eventually the pairing starts to pick up steam and you think the movie might too. But no such luck. It's still a rather dry, oddly lifeless, musical. And a very antiquated looking and sounding one to the modern eye and ear. The Astaire-Garland pairing never sizzles the way you'd hope it would. Astaire is obviously the far superior dancer of the two. Garland gamely tries to keep up but the contrast is rather jarring. It kind of works for the story in that Garland's character is supposed to be an anonymous nobody of a dancer. But when Astaire's best musical number pairs him with a couple of anonymous hoofers while Garland stands idly by offstage it says a lot. The age disparity catches up with the pair as well once the inevitable romantic storyline kicks in. Everything about the pairing, and thus the movie, seems off somehow. It never comes together properly. The songs, the cornerstones of any movie musical, are all forgettable. The humor largely falls flat, most notably in one scene involving the world's weirdest waiter. The story isn't much of a story at all. Astaire and Garland have their moments but not nearly enough of them to carry this film to success.

This was modeled after the cycle of Warner Bros musicals in the 30's; so for the first part we get various backstage tribulations about the effort to stage a show, usually a search for love that can inspire dance, with the eye-popping show in question as the second part.It starts with the miraculous dance pair breaking it off. She wants to be a star on her own right; he sets out to prove that he can get any girl to dance as well as she can. He plucks the first girl he sees out of a chorus line in a bar, just like he did with her the first time. She turns out to be a disaster, humorously rendered as her not even knowing which foot is left.So how to make headlines once more? Of course he grooms her into the image of that first woman, and she turns out great; but only because, unbeknownst to him, he was seducing out of her the love that can make a difference. So eventually the two rival shows are made to spin at the same time, vying for headlines and our attention. The new pair visits the opponent to strut their newfound triumph under her nose, but she's cunning enough to seduce a dance out of her ex-partner that will break them apart.Naturally, this being an MGM production, the finale is drenched with the wistful sentiment about wholesome values one is led to expect. The two of them stroll happy together on the Easter Parade, as promised in the beginning.So generally speaking this may seem like ordinary stuff for the time. Two things make it stand out however. One is Fred Astaire, such heavenly, chattery legs. Put simply, there is no Michael Jackson without Astaire. The other is a kind of soft Vertigo at the heart of the candy-colored spectacle about an obsession with cultivating an image, less morbid this go round, less dangerous, but potent the right amount if we keep in mind how it mirrors across the sparkling surface of a deeply troubled Judy Garland.We know how MGM cultivated the young star in the image of the chaste teenage girl that she's also saddled with in the opening of this film. In the finale she manages to lift herself out of the confines of that image and asserts herself as a sexual, dynamic woman, likely mapping to some part of her struggle in real life to pursue her heart. Among her many lovers, she counted Frank Sinatra, Welles, Mankiewicz, and Tyrone Power. She had enough pull in Hollywood by this time to get then husband Vincente Minnelli fired from this.Our loss here is that Chyd Charisse broke an ankle and could not appear. Ann Miller as replacement acquits herself pretty well as the scheming diva. Her last on-screen glimmer decades later would be Mulholland Dr., where she reflects on the bygone Technicolor glories here.