Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

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 may be flawed, but its message is not.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

. . . composer Khachaturian's "Sabre Dance," in which pianist Oscar Levant's fingers do all the "hoofing." Levant is the REAL star of THE BARKLEYS OF BR0ADWAY, rather than that infamously cadaverous foot-flapper Fred Astaire, who resembles Rocky Balboa in ROCKY 7 here. And if you're wondering whether Fred's Henchwoman Ginger Rogers let herself go to seed during the decade between her previous dance film and BARKLEYS, let's just say that she's metaphorically similar here to a World War Two "Victory Garden" that was abandoned on V-J Day four years earlier and is now choked with weeds. As the BARKLEYS' only connection to REAL music, however, Oscar Levant is spell-binding in his "Ezra Miller" role. The other highlight of BARKLEYS is Mr. Levant's Command Performance of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B Flat Minor. Otherwise, this movie foists off on its viewers stale leftovers from the nine earlier Astaire\Rogers outings, punctuated with a few new but misguided wrinkles, such as Fred playing a deranged cobbler gunning down a dozen pairs of "magic" shoes while destroying his shop.

Bickering husband and wife musical comedy team break up over her ambitions to become a dramatic actress. Final Fred & Ginger movie and their only film in color. Doesn't seem to get a lot of love but I enjoyed it. Fred and Ginger still play well off of each other, though admittedly the script doesn't have any of the sexual tension or playful banter of their more classic films. The bickering is nowhere near as bad as other reviewers have said, though. I felt the relationship between the two was very loving.Ginger is absolutely gorgeous in Technicolor. I can't remember her ever looking so radiant. Her wardrobe was great, too. Speaking of beauties, I have to mention lovely Carol Brewster who had a small part but caught my eye. She looked quite fetching as well. Cutie Gale Robbins is fun as Ginger's understudy. Oscar Levant is great as their friend. He also has a couple of nice piano numbers.The musical numbers are good. The Scottish number, Fred's solo number, and "They Can't Take That Away from Me" were all excellent. But whose brilliant idea was it to ruin the opening (and probably best) dance number by putting the opening credits over it? Regardless, it's a good movie with some solid musical numbers, luscious Technicolor, and the great Fred & Ginger in their last film.

Though the least good of the Astaire-Rogers films, this is well worth watching--though leave the room before Rogers shows off her dramatic talent, a la Sarah Bernhardt, if you want to retain your sanity. But the highlight of the film is the wonderfully mordant, even morbid, Oscar Levant. He has a better part in The Band Wagon and An American in Paris, but here he is more of a welcome contrast to the mediocrity of the rest of the picture. Levant, who always played himself--a classical musician consumed with self-loathing and the loathing of all things phony and an enthusiastic consumer of drink and drugs--was a welcome touch of cynical Manhattan sophistication in the midst of sunshiny, happiness-crazed California. My favourite line of his of all time is in this picture--when Astaire and Rogers are striding heartily through fields and forests and things, he pleads, "Let's all stay in the house and take pills."

Even those of us who are too young to have seen those great Astaire/Rogers black and white musicals the first time around - and let's face it, even one who was only ten in 1935, the year Top Hat was released, would now be eighty one and unlikely to be active on this or indeed any other board - will still feel a frisson at the very opening frames of this movie - over which the credits are supered - a shot of the four most iconic dancing feet in movie musicals doing what they did so well that they helped millions to find momentary relief from the Great Depression. Cynics may argue that MGM opened with this shot - which slowly pans up to reveal Fred and Giner in full spate - knowing full well that what followed was at best a pedestrian script from the vastly overrated Comden and Green (thank God they didn't lumber Fred with some of their equally pedestrian lyrics) who would recycle it yet again four years later in The Bandwagon, once more teaming Astaire with Oscar Levant. In common with, I guess, the majority of musical buffs who are active on these boards I first saw the original Astaire/Rogers movies many years later on TV by which time I'd already seen Fred dancing with other partners from the mediocre (Jane Powell, Vera Ellen) to the outstanding (Rita Hayworth, Cyd Charisse) so that the glaring flaws of those black and white gems -the ridiculous depiction of Venice (Top Hat), the pristine engine room of an ocean-going liner (Shall We Dance) etc to say nothing of the remote coldness of Rogers stood out more than if I had watched them as a child of the Depression seeking only escape from soup kitchens and bread lines but what was undeniable was the charm and style of Astaire, the gorgeous songs and the greatest and most stylish pair of male feet ever to grace the musical screen. Harry Warren was, no question, a great composer but he fell just a tad short of Porter, Kern and Gershwin if not necessarily Berlin and although he delivers a fine score here, to which Ira Gershwin fashioned some deft lyrics the movie failed to deliver a 'standard' to rank alongside The Way You Look Tonight (Swingtime), Cheek To Cheek (Top Hat), Change Partners (Carefree) etc in fact the classiest number on display by a country mile is They Can't Take That Away From Me which Ira wrote originally, with brother George, for Shall We Dance. In the early/mid forties MGM had a penchant for self-contained 'classical' moments in popular musicals, often employing the likes of Jose Iturbi to ham his way though a flashy classical piece that had little or nothing to do with the rest of the film (and like those Lena Horne numbers could be edited out when the film played the Deep South); one had hoped that by 1949 the powers that be had matured a little but no, here we get Oscar Levant - who is playing a composer of 'show' tunes - giving his rendition of The Sabre Dance and Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto Number #1 in D Flat whilst his 'character' has never displayed either an interest in or aptitude for the classics. Maybe they were deliberately attempting an 'old fashioned' feel or trying to cram the quart of Astaire-Rogers into the pint pot of Anchors Aweigh but whatever the intention the result is mild embarrassment. No film that stars Astaire and allows him to dance can be dismissed entirely and when he is allowed to do what he did better than anyone else the film comes alive and is worth watching but on balance there are not enough Astaire magic moments.