Borserie
it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.
StyleSk8r
At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.
Ella-May O'Brien
Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
jhkp
Another reviewer stated that no one goes to musicals for the story. Think of The Band Wagon, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, Meet Me In St. Louis, State Fair (1945), Singin' In The Rain. Did you really enjoy those musicals just for the songs and dances, and ignore the story, dialog, and situations? I doubt it.Some reviewers have criticized the screenplay by Sidney Sheldon. It's not great, but I think the direction is really the problem here. Robert Lewis was an accomplished theatre director and teacher (The Actor's Studio), as well as an occasional Hollywood actor, but this was his first and last feature film as director. There's some originality and wit (think of the two French sailors who appear periodically - a well-done bit), but the tone of the whole picture is off, the pace is off, the director doesn't know the tricks to brighten and even out the screenplay's banalities.Disagreeing with some other reviews here, I think Jeanmaire has a surprisingly good, strong singing voice for a non-singer She was a professional ballet dancer, not a singer. And she was a pretty good actress - watch carefully and you will see her emotional responses are real. You can even see her breath come fast when she tells Crosby how much she loves him. I disagree with the reviewer who criticized the number Donald O'Connor did with the kids. Please look at this number carefully and see exactly what an amazing dancer and athlete this guy is. Notice how he dances with that small ball, and the larger ones. How he's able to make the ball bounce exactly right, off of opposing walls, to match his turns, etc. It's amazing. The song itself - like all the interpolated Cahn-Van Heusen songs - is so completely different in style from the old Cole Porter tunes, it just sounds out of place. Like Neil Simon had written some new scenes for a Kaufman-Hart play. It isn't that Cahn and Van Heusen aren't great, they just aren't the same style of songwriter as Porter, so their songs up against his are jarring.Mitzi Gaynor, as usual, gives her all. I saw her stage show, once. Though she's very good on film, she was phenomenal onstage.I could watch Bing in anything.
David Lobosco
The musical Anything Goes was a superb Cole Porter Broadway show when it opened in the 1930s. Since its 1934 debut at the Neil Simon Theatre (at the time known as the Alvin) on Broadway, the musical has been revived several times in the United States and Britain and has been filmed twice. The musical had a tryout in Boston, before opening on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre on November 21, 1934. It ran for 420 performances, becoming the fourth longest-running musical of the 1930s, despite the impact of the Great Depression on Broadway patrons' disposable income.The movie was first filmed in 1936 with Bing Crosby and Ethel Merman, but it bared little resemblance to the Broadway show. Twenty years later, Bing was ending his contract with Paramount Studios after twenty four years with the studio. His last movie for Paramount would be an updated version of Anything Goes in 1956. Though this film again starred Bing Crosby (whose character was once more renamed), Donald O'Connor, and comedian Phil Harris in a cameo, the new film almost completely excised the rest of the characters in favor of a totally new plot. The film features almost no similarities to the play or 1936 film, apart from some songs and the title.I have always enjoyed this 1956 swan song Bing made for Paramount. However, this movie could have been a great movie and not just a good or fair movie. I think my biggest problem with the film was Bing's co-star Zizi Jeanmaire. She was a popular French ballet dancer, who was married to the choreographer of the movie Roland Petit. Whether she got him his job on the film or visa versa, I don't know. However, she was totally wrong as Bing's love interest. Bing and Jeanmaire just did not have the chemistry. She was a fine dancer, but the Cole Porter song "I Get A Kick Out Of You" was wasted on her limited vocal ability.Speaking of the Cole Porter score, Paramount did a grave injustice by tearing apart the great Broadway score. The primary musical numbers ("Anything Goes", "You're the Top", "I Get a Kick Out of You", "It's De-Lovely" and "Blow, Gabriel, Blow") with updated arrangements appear in the film, while the lesser-known Porter songs were cut completely, and new songs, written by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn, were substituted. I enjoy the music of Cahn and Van Heusen, and they wrote some of the great songs in Frank Sinatra's songbook. However, when they wrote for Bing in the 1950s, the songs sounded tired and corny. The two songs they wrote for Bing were "Ya Gotta Give the People Hoke" and "A Second Hand Turbin". Bing deserved better songs than this.One more thing I would have done differently with the film is the use of Phil Harris. Harris not only was a great personality and singer but also a personal friend of Bing. In the movie he played the father of Mitzi Gaynor. He had a good role in the film, but Harris did not have much interaction with Bing. I think that was a wasted opportunity for a musical number between the two. It would have made for some great cinema.Again, while the 1956 version of Anything Goes is no Singin' In The Rain, it is not a bad movie. It was one of the first Bing movies I remember watching and despite what I would change, I think the pairing of Bing and Donald O'Connor was great. Also the finale of "Blow Gabriel Blow" is a fitting end to Bing's association with Paramount. He helped to save the studio from bankruptcy in 1932, and Bing was one of the studio's biggest stars for the next two decades...
aimless-46
It's easy to understand why they took their time getting around to releasing a DVD of this one. As can be seen from other comments, the 1956 film version of "Anything Goes" will generally disappoint those who love the stage version. Other than some of Cole Porter's songs and a setting on a cruise ship there is no similarity between the two productions. The very entertaining (and still frequently performed) Cole Porter musical has been transformed into a pretty lame film, and three songs by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn have been inexplicably added to the production. Even worse is the loss of most of P.G. Wodehouse's clever script, which was rewritten by a Hollywood hack into this dumbed-down version. This doesn't make "Anything Goes" unwatchable. The choreography is mostly first rate. Most of the musical numbers are entertaining and several are excellent. The performances are typical of each cast members career work (both good and bad) and the film has some interesting Hollywood cinema history aspects. You know almost immediately that this will not be a rousing bit of entertainment, instead of a high-energy opening number the film begins with a back stage party scene that is about as lively as an abandoned railroad track. Bing Crosby and Donald O'Connor play Broadway co-stars who go to Europe to recruit a leading lady for their upcoming show. Each brings their discovery aboard a cruise ship for a transatlantic voyage. Mitzi Gaynor and Zizi Jeanmaire play the girls. Since there is only one role the remainder of the film is about determining which one will be featured and keeping it secret that both were already promised the role. There are two romances, with the two actors falling for each other's girl during the ocean crossing. Suspense and comedy are in short supply. Gaynor manages a pretty good performance; she gets one very hot feature number (the title song-although Porter's original four letter word lyrics are toned down) and duets with O'Connor in the film's best number "It's De-lovely". O'Connor is also featured in a very original dance routine with children and a lot of bouncing balls. In this he dances to Van Heusen's "Bounce Right Back," not much of a song but a good excuse for using him in another unique routine. Jeanmaire was a French ballet star ("Carmen") who briefly tried her stuff in mid-50's Hollywood. She was a Leslie Caron clone complete with the same hairstyle. Her two solo numbers "I Get a Kick Out of You" and "Dream Ballet" are surprisingly good, at least the dancing portions. Bing Crosby of course is well known to old movie buffs but others will be somewhat puzzled by his popularity. Nothing he does in "Anything Goes" sheds light on this question. He was a "popular" extremely bland singer and a horrible actor with some comic ability. In "Anything Goes" even his comedy stuff is pretty awful. Paired with Bing, O'Connor has about the same chance for success as someone trying to sneak through a balloon shop wearing a porcupine overcoat. The Technicolor and VistaVision completely overpower the cheap production design as well as Sidney Sheldon's (the hack writer mentioned above) weak adaptation. Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.
scootmandutoo
When the film "DeLovely" recently rekindled my love for Cole Porter's music, I encountered this DVD on sale and thought it would make a great addition to my collection. It didn't. For the most part, what a clunker.I realize that as great as the music is, "Anything Goes" is a bit dated as a musical, but this story, which has nothing to do with the original, is just dreadful.In addition to the uninspired plot, the songs that were added by Sammy Cahn and James Van Heusen are remarkably banal. Even more so, when one compares them to the Porter originals left in. It's sad that anybody watching might actually think they were Porter's own.Additionally, because of the prudishness of Hollywood, Porter's originals get censored too. An example of the lunacy is when, in a lyric, "4-letter word" becomes "3 letter-word." How trite can Hollywood be? 2 Porter songs in the beginning that get transformed into '50s-style jazz-dance numbers for the female leads lose all their charm from the butchery. The song "Anything Goes" has never been given a worse rendition.Bing Crosby, in his last Paramount picture, sleepwalks through it. Jeanmaire is not much better (especially her acting). It is no surprise that her career gravitated back to France after this.Mitzi Gaynor was her usual perky self, but the film gets saved somewhat by Donald O'Connor's presence and energy. The one Porter song that seems to have kept its charm is a nice Gaynor/O'Connor duet on "De-Lovely." While Porter purists will retch over this film (which was probably what his reaction was after seeing it, especially the added songs), it does offer up a period glimpse of Hollywood choreography from the mid-50s, along with the previously mentioned duet.Otherwise, it's the bottom, not the top.
