Artivels Undescribable Perfection

Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

MartinHafer I like Red Skelton films. However, they're certainly not all alike. His best are films where he's the star and nothing else. But since MGM was the studio of the big musicals as well, often he was placed in musicals...with mostly second-rate results. I have nothing against musicals....but when you are making a comedy, let the comedian do his schtick and don't distract the audience with songs. And, unfortunately, this one also has a bit of Esther Williams' swimming...and so Skelton isn't exactly the sole focus of the movie.Cornie (Skelton) and Debbie (Esther Williams) work at a carnival. One day, a super-rich Texan, Dan Sabinas (Keenan Wynn) arrives and takes an instant liking to Cornie and invites him to a big party he's throwing. Unfortunately, Dan is dead drunk and has no recollection of doing this...but Cornie takes him at his word and brings Debbie with him to Texas for the party. Through a case of mistaken identity, the pair are mistaken for Dan and his sister--and soon everyone is making over them like they are rich millionaires. Insanely, the pair decide to play along...and ultimately get into all sorts of trouble. The worst part is that Red accidentally loses $17,000 in a poker game that lasts about 30 seconds...and he cannot possibly pay. How can he extricate himself from this huge mess? And, what will Debbie do when a man (Howard Keel) has fallen from her and it appears that he thinks she is Dan's sister!While the plot sounds pretty funny it suffers from three problems. The first I mentioned above--singing and swimming that get in the way of the comedy. The second is that the ending is incredibly ludicrous with everything working out just fine...almost as if an intertitle card popped up and said "Ignore the mess they've gotten into....PRESTO...it's gone". Third, and the previous two problems contribute to this, is that it just isn't a particularly funny film. Agreeable but nothing more.

Michael O'Keefe This musical comedy stars Red Skelton as Cornie, who teams with the ever attractive Esther Williams as his partner Debbie, who work a dunk tank at a carnival...not successfully. Cornie comes to the aid of an oil baron Dan Sabinas(Keenan Wynn), who has had too much to drink and takes a cab to Mexico before giving his car keys to the carnival worker. When Cornie tries to return the car to Dan's hotel, he is mistaken for the tycoon. This is when the fun really begins. Howard Keel plays Dan's ranch foreman; Texas CARNIVAL now becomes a legitimate musical. (At some point you will think this could have been just as good as a straight comedy). Others in the cast: Ann Miller, Tom Tully, Hans Conried, Thurston Hall and Glenn Strange. One of the highlights is a water ballet sequence. Ms. Williams couldn't look any finer.

vincentlynch-moonoi I'm a tremendous fan of Red Skelton. And that's what it takes to get very excited about this film -- being a fan of Skelton, Esther Williams, or Howard Keel.Red Skelton does fine here. Enough slapstick to keep you interested. Esther Williams doesn't have a great swim routine until after mid-way through the film...although it's a nice one that is a sort of dream sequence with a lovely white flowing gown. Howard Keel's numbers are sort of hick-ish. Ann Miller is there, though I still don't understand what MGM saw in her...a horse of a woman that, in my view, wasn't that good a dancer. Keenan Wynn is sort of annoying here.The plot centers around two carnival sideshow workers who are mistaken for a rich Texan, but can't seem to get themselves out of the misunderstanding.The saving graces of the film include the aforementioned Williams swim routine (the only one in the film), the great drunk scene in the bar (no one was better at playing drunk than Red Skelton), and the chuck wagon race finale (which includes some pretty spectacular stunt riding).

Greg Couture This brash and often noisy Technicolor trifle is definitely not for those expecting to enjoy a series of Esther's more elaborate water ballets. She spends a minimal amount of time in the water in this one and there's only one trademark production number, a dream sequence in which she floats sinuously about in Howard Keel's darkened hotel room, trailing yards of diaphanous white veiling, that comes close to what her fans might have lined up at the box-office hoping to enjoy.Esther, however, looks wondrously healthy and pretty throughout, the very picture of an All-American Girl, acting with her usual pert insouciance. Howard gets to unleash his rich bass-baritone in two or three forgettable songs, though he certainly looks convincing as a lanky ranch foreman. Red Skelton contributes his usual shtick, at some tedious length here and there, and even manages to amuse today's audiences with a skillfully executed pratfall or two. Ann Miller, ever the most energetic in the cast, seems to come out on top in this pastiche, tossing off a couple of her patented leg-tossing, tippy-tapping dance amazements, choreographed by the reliable Hermes Pan.M-G-M touted this as 'Another Big MGM Musical' but it appears to have been rather thriftily produced, with some minimal location work that looks notably cobbled together, especially in a concluding and very extended chuck wagon race, which involves some dangerously risky stunt work, by the way.Keenan Wynn lends some very sour support, as a Texas millionaire, overly fond of his bourbon. Skelton also is supposed to imbibe a prodigious amount in one drawn-out sequence, and we're meant to find it riotously funny, something that may have been acceptable back in the early 1950s but which fails to amuse as easily today, with our greater awareness of the very deleterious effects of excessive alcohol intake.It's also amusing to note how very much inflation has devalued the American dollar in the more than half-century since this film was released. A multi-room hotel suite large enough to fill one of M-G-M's average soundstages is quoted as costing what would be the usual price in today's dollars for a single, modest hotel room in a smaller U.S. city. A doctor makes a house call, to tend a briefly ailing Ms. Williams (She's fainted from hunger, poor thing!), for a fee that wouldn't cover the charge for administering an aspirin anywhere in a U. S. health facility today. A beautiful Lincoln Cosmopolitan convertible is smashed into a tree (mercifully, off-camera) and the quoted estimated tariff for its repairs (supposedly including a ruined dashboard) is so laughably minuscule that the total wouldn't cover a six months' insurance premium assessed for an ultra-safe contemporary driver with no traffic citations on his/her record over many prior years of accident-free mileage. What price progress?!?