Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Richard Chatten For three minutes towards the end of this overproduced travesty of Moss Hart's 1941 Broadway musical we eventually get a hint of what might have been, when Ginger Rogers is finally allowed to sing a song from Kurt Weill & Ira Gershwin's acclaimed score - the magnificent 'Saga of Jenny' - the only song from the original production to make it into the film. (The flashbacks to her childhood and youth that follow actually manage to be quite touching.) At $2.6million the most expensive film yet made by Paramount, at the box office the studio received a handsome return on its investment. But the hectoring misogyny that makes this film almost unwatchable today is probably just one reason that nobody has yet bothered to do a decent restoration of the film, so we don't really get the full benefit of the Oscar-nominated Technicolor photography and art direction that wowed critics and audiences in 1944.Ray Milland is excruciatingly misused as a charmless boor who Ginger is required by the script eventually to fall into the arms of (Cary Grant might just have pulled it off), and her rejection of Warner Baxter and Jon Hall for being insufficiently Alpha is just another twist of the knife of the already unpleasant sexual politics of this piece. (Ginger, by the way, actually looks pretty cool to my eyes in her 'unattractive' mannish suits.) But at least we don't get Danny Kaye's mugging from the Broadway original as the camp fashion photographer Russell Paxton (Mischa Auer is a far more agreeable substitute), and are spared his 'hilarious' patter song 'Tschaikowsky (and Other Russians)'. Mary Phillips does her best in an underwritten part (as indeed are most of them). Edward Fielding, by the way, who plays Ginger's physician in the opening sequence, also appeared uncredited as Dr.Edwardes in the dream sequence of Hitchcock's 'Spellbound' (1945), Hollywood's other high profile exercise in cod psychology from this era.

Alex da Silva Liza (Ginger Rogers) is the editor of a magazine who can no longer make decisions. She suffers headaches because she is highly strung about work and she has a love life that she is not comfortable with. Through psychoanalysis with Dr Brooks (Barry Sullivan), she unravels her troubles by recounting 3 dream sequences. Can she regain her decisiveness? This film is a bit girly in that it concerns one woman's journey to discover lost memories and understand her behaviours. It has great colour, good costumes and it's well acted with a spattering of humour throughout. The bulk of the film comes in the form of dream sequences which are musical, colourful and surreal. The 2nd sequence has a pointless dance scene which drags on a bit but overall the dreams are entertaining. The rest of the film follows the romances that Liza has alongside her role as a tough "boss lady". The film is fun and has a happy ending.

Ed A product of the times but still dreadful! Ginger looking rather mannish (get it?) until she finds a man. Almost all songs deleted except for "Jenny" ("My Ship" which is the crucial key to the solution of her problems was also inexplicably deleted.). Film composers were generally treated like dirt including Leonard Bernstein in "On the Town" with "improvements" by Roger Edens. But this one is the worst! Historically of some interest but still to be avoided.

claudecat I was looking forward to seeing this film, because I had heard the wonderful Weill/Gershwin songs from the Broadway version. Much to my dismay, all but one-and-a-half of the songs were cut, and the storyline is one of the top-ten most sexist I have ever seen on the screen. I'm very surprised that only one other reviewer commented on that aspect of it! Ginger plays a publishing executive who [THIS IS PROBABLY A SPOILER BUT I MUST WRITE IT] "needs" to learn that she should dress up prettier (though her costumes are by Edith Head!), and let a man take over her business, otherwise she'll continue on her downward spiral toward insanity. Seriously. Ray Milland plays a jerk of the first water; I have never forgiven him. I was glad to hear from another reviewer that the Broadway show isn't this bad, but the movie should be avoided if this sort of thing upsets you at all. If you can laugh about it, you might enjoy the colors, the wacky 40's sets, and the foolish scenes where Ginger visits her idiot of a psychiatrist.