Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Please don't spend money on this.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

"Gloriously vulgar," says the book "The MGM Story," and that's as good a description as any of this enormous MGM musical, directed (rather anonymously) by Robert Z. Leonard, who had helmed "The Great Ziegfeld," with musical numbers--which, typically for him, could never be contained on an actual stage--by Busby Berkeley. Though set in the 1920s, when the Follies reigned, the costumes are thoroughly 1941, and the songs--including Roger Edens' "Minnie from Trinidad," which could never have been a Twenties tune--sound thoroughly contemporary. It's a long film by 1941 MGM standards, and that's to contain acres of story about three Ziegfeld girls: the nice one (Garland) who loves her dad and limits her romantic life to chaste chocolate malts with Jackie Cooper; the glamorous one (Lamarr) who's mooning over Philip Dorn while considering an affair with Tony Martin, who's married to Rose Hobart, who has one nice scene; and the weak, fast-living one (Turner), who drinks her way to the bottom. Her boyfriend, Jimmy Stewart, is oddly cast, in a sort of Cagney role; he's fine, but the fistfights and Brooklynite dese-dem-dose readings don't fit him that well. Capable character actors loom everywhere, from Ian Hunter to Charles Winninger to Eve Arden, the dialog's crisp and idiomatic, and the MGM morality--good things happen to good people, essentially--is amusingly pronounced. Not a great flick by any means, but a prime example of what lavish, diverting mass entertainment looked like in 1941.

If ever a musical cried out for Technicolor, this one is it. If M-G- M wanted to save money, surely they could have done justice to Adrian's sumptuously and bizarrely over-decorated costumes and gowns and Gibbons' sets and Berkeley's choreography by filming these sequences in color and the rest in sepia — the rest doesn't deserve color that's for sure. In fact the rest doesn't even deserve to have been made in the first place. One doesn't expect the surrounding story in a musical to be strong, but this one is particularly weak. Despite the fact that it incorporates three plots, all of them are dull, clichéd and thoroughly unbelievable as well as thoroughly familiar. If ever familiarity bred contempt, this is a good example right here. At least the hoary old showbiz trouper plot with Judy Garland does allow Chas Winninger to strut his stuff (once with Garland and once in a very agreeable duet with Al Shean himself); but as for the Hedy Lamarr husband Philip Dorn, a budding but starving concert violinist, and romantic complications provided by charmless if musically accurate singer Tony Martin, plus the even worse Lana Turner's poor elevator girl who wants Ian Hunter's riches and jilts her humble, truck-driving boyfriend James Stewart, we would be better off without them. All they do is provide an excuse for Lamarr to look wooden-facedly glamorous and Turner to look super- slinky and glamorous (nice photography by Ray June). Although he receives first billing, Jimmy Stewart's role is both small and colorless – despite at least one half-hearted attempt by the screenwriter to pep it up a bit.This is the sort of film that, despite its outrageously long running time, would make a good movie pack — just extract the highlights and the musical numbers and songs to receive quite passable entertainment. True, it's not in color and Berkeley's routines lack the drive, freshness, originality, pace and sheer zip of his Warner Bros work.As it is, however, not one of my favorite musicals. Even a minor Fox musical like "Mother Wore Tights" pours crud all over it. (Dan Dailey is in this one too, but here he neither sings nor dances — he plays a prize fighter complete with cauliflower ear!)

Having previously watched this film in the early part of this century, I have to admit right away that when I just saw this again right now that I forgot much of what happened in it other than Judy Garland's numbers and her story as well as Lana Turner's. Both of them give fine performances about rising to fame in the Ziegfeld Follies while Hedy Lamarr was okay with what she did here though her story isn't given as much attention which was just as well. Top-billed Jimmy Stewart was also good as Ms. Turner's on-and-off boyfriend who ends up doing something illegal in order to be in the same social strata as her. Oh, and I loved that number Charles Winninger and Al Shean did near the end in which they did a song complete with funny jokes. Mr. Shean, by the way, was a relative of the Marx Brothers. So on that note, I highly recommend Ziegfeld Girl. P.S. The reason I reviewed this just now was because since I've been commenting on the Our Gang series-and individual films outside of that featuring at least one player from there-in chronological order, this was next on the list as Jackie Cooper here played Ms. Turner's brother and Judy's boyfriend. He did okay with what he had here. Oh, and Stewart joined the military after completing this. When he returned to Hollywood five years later, his next film would be my all-time favorite, It's a Wonderful Life...

Jimmy Stewart a bad guy, sort of. This really derailed me, but I got used to it. He even had a kind of New York (Brooklyn?) accent, and hung around with gangsters 'for 'da money!!!', lol.Judy Garland not the prettiest. Her part showed her as more juvenile, compared to Hedy Lamarr and Lana Turner who were both very glamorous. Judy was the singer, however, and helped carry the show within a show.Nice to see Jackie Cooper, Charles Winninger, Dan Dailey, Al Shean, Eve Arden, Edward Everett Horton, Ian Hunter, et al. These were all nice surprises; one star after another popping up.A side historical note: 1941. World War II (Pearl Harbor) was starting up for the U.S. later that year, although Europe was already at war. This movie must certainly been a pleasant entertainment respite, however, from all the fighting and killing, gore and guts.Wish this movie had been in color. The Adrian gowns would have been even more spectacular, not to mention all the elaborate headdresses, netting, scenery, etc.I really enjoyed this movie. I love singing and dancing movies. I believe the Minnie/Trinidad number reminded me of a Judy and Mickey movie where they both dressed in the island costumes, with Mickey also dressed as a Carmen Miranda-type complete with the fruit on his head and even a dark-skinned makeup put on his face. I felt that that makeup for Mickey rather represented the racism of that day, however.I also realize that this movie was made for Judy not long after Wizard of Oz, and in that other movie she had had the bosom strapped down, so to speak. In this movie, however, she was made to look a little older, with more of an older teen female bosom. Indeed, looking at her thin legs while she was dancing made me think of all the movies where she had gained weight and Mr. Mayer's crew was always down on her to lose weight.