Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

Numerootno A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Roman Sampson One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

jacobs-greenwood Directed by Edward Buzzell, and written by Dorothy Kingsley (who would share a Best Writing Oscar some years later for her work on Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)), this below average Musical comedy stars Esther Williams (in the title role?), Keenan Wynn, Red Skelton, Ricardo Montalban, and Betty Garrett. "Baby, It's Cold Outside" earned Frank Loesser his only Oscar, on his fourth try out of five nominations, for Best Song. The scene in which it's sung, by Williams with Montalban and Garrett with Skelton (the two couples), is one of the film's best. Otherwise, it's pretty chauvinistic fluff.Williams plays a champion swimmer whom Wynn's character finally convinces to partner with him to sell swimsuits. They are very successful. Garrett plays Williams's sister, who can't wait to find a fella, that ends up meeting goofy masseur Skelton, who's never even kissed a girl. Enter Montalban, South America's best polo player. After losing a radio callout contest, Skelton winds up giving the injured Montalban a massage, who in turn gives Skelton some romance advice. Wynn decides that arranging a show for the visiting polo players would be good business, and Garrett decides to be the first girl to meet their star, José O'Rourke (Montalban), for her own desires. Garrett mistakes Skelton for O'Rourke and, wanting to impress her and try out his new "moves", Skelton pretends to be José.Trouble arises when the standoffish businesswoman Williams believes the horse riding playboy O'Rourke is courting her; she thinks he's pursuing her and her sister at the same time! This well oiled case of mistaken identity theme is about all there is to sustain the rest of the film, besides some singing, dancing, and music played by Xavier Cugat (as himself) and his band. Naturally, this device only delays the inevitable, each gal will end up with their guy, though Williams puts up the most resistance, with Wynn making his own play for her in a losing effort to Montalban.There is a subplot involving a gangster (Ted de Corsia), and his dumb heavy (the always reliable Mike Mazurki), who figures capturing O'Rourke before the big polo match will be a good way to win a big gambling bet. Otherwise, the only other feature of note is some humorous, not politically correct scenes with Mel Blanc playing a South American named Pancho. Then, of course, there are the swimsuits, and their models, as well as the standard synchronized swimming routines which are typical of Ms. Williams's films.

weezeralfalfa Released 5 years after Esther Williams' initial starring role in a 'swimusical', in the very well received "Bathing Beauty", Red Skelton is again prominently featured, and Xavier Cugat's band again has several lively productions. This time, instead of a romance between Esther's and Red's character, a more standard formula plot has Esther being wooed by famous polo player Jose O'Rourke, in the form of conventional handsome and suave Ricardo Montalban, while Red is pursued by Betty Garrett's typecast man-hungry character, who mistakenly believes him to be O'Rourke. You will likely recognize Betty from her role as a man-hungry taxi driver, who tries to bed Frank Sinatra, in "On the Town", released the same year. Ricardo and Esther make a rather bland romantic couple, compared with Red and Betty, in which Red has to pretend he is a South American, knowing only a few words of Spanish, as Cugat, for example, soon figures out. Despite all the glaring clues that Red can't be whom she thinks he is, Betty incongruously continues to believe, until near the end, that Red is O'Rourke. Cugat's band makes several appearances, the first 2 being especially noteworthy, and are the clear highlights of this film for me. Included in the first production is a nameless dance couple, who do a fancy dance routine, in very colorful outfits. This production is actually split into two parts, with Betty the primary featured performer in the second part, with some input by Red. The second production features a primitive jungle tribe theme, with some wild dancing to "Jungle Rhumba". There is a water show near the end, but it's nothing special. Besides Cugat's productions, the several musical numbers were composed by Frank Loesser. Betty's character expresses her fascination with men, in "I Love Those Men": part of Cugat's first production. During the swimsuit fashion show, Loesser's composition "On a Slow Boat to China" is sometimes heard in the background. Believe it or not, the words were considered by the Hays commission to be too racy to be sung by the principle characters to each other! Ricardo later expresses his fascination with Esther in "My Heart Beats Faster", as they dance around a bit. In their respective private residences, First Ricardo and Esther, then Red and Betty, sing the well-remembered counterpoint duet "Baby, It's Cold Outside", in playful scenes. The story is that Loesser actually composed this in '44, but it remained a privately-done song until MGM bought it for this film. It actually won the Oscar for Best Original Song, in a year with thin competition.In place of Red's joining a ballet class, in "Bathing Beauty", here he joins an otherwise all female swimming team doing warm-ups beside the pool, in order to escape a man chasing him. Not as amusing as the ballet caper , but will probably please Red's fans, he ending up with his neck pinned under a croquet wicket!The section where Red has to actually play polo, supposedly as O'Rourke, is totally unbelievable, if amusing. First, it takes a team of people to get him on a horse, which turns out to be a jumper, rather than a polo pony. This is merely the first of several horses, including a bucking bronco, that Red rides on and off the field of play. During the match, Red falls off his horse and is dragged by his stirrup for a spell, breaks his mallet, and hits a bag of polo balls on the sideline, scatting balls all over the field. Nonetheless, he manages to score enough goals to give the South American team a win, and thus preserve the reputation of the real O'Rourke, who has been kidnapped by a gang, who have bet on the South American team losing.(South America apparently is being treated as one country!)Keenan Wynn, aside from acting as the occasional narrator, has a rather minor character role....This was the second and last pairing of Esther and Ricardo as the leads.This film is presently part of a DVD collection of some of Esther's films.

bkoganbing Two of MGM's biggest box office attractions teamed once again for the film Neptune's Daughter in 1949. Esther Williams and Red Skelton certainly brought their own respective fan bases for this film. With these two MGM was fighting the good fight against the increasing drawing power of television which would certainly soon claim Skelton.Esther Williams and scatterbrained mantrap sister Betty Garrett are peddling a new line of swimwear and no one could certainly model her own designs better than Esther Williams both in and out of the water. But she's constantly worried about all the boyfriends that Garrett is finding and then discarding. Better to keep a close eye on her.Enter masseuse Red Skelton at the club resort that Williams and Garrett are staying. He's got no luck with women at all. So he seeks advice from South American polo player Ricardo Montalban who's a devil with the ladies. Red not only seeks advice, but he appropriates Montalban's character name of Jose O'Rourke. That causes some real problems when Montalban courts Williams and Williams learns somebody named Jose O'Rouke has been calling on Garrett.Red has some really inventive comedy routines one involving tricking Mike Mazurki into thinking he needs a spinal adjustment while he's being held against his will. And the climax is a hilarious polo match where Skelton substitutes for Montalban in a polo match where gamblers are trying for a fix. I've seen many different sports lampooned in film, but Neptune's Daughter is the only film around that took to satirizing polo.Frank Loesser who was really coming into his own as a writer of both music and lyrics did the score for Neptune's Daughter. Loesser had a big hit in Charley's Aunt running on Broadway and was working on another project when Neptune's Daughter came out, a musical based on Damon Runyon characters called Guys And Dolls. Played instrumentally, but not sung is his previous hit On A Slow Boat To China done during a fashion show sequence involving Esther Williams's swim suits.And Loesser brought home the film's Oscar for best song with Baby, It's Cold Outside. Montalban and Williams do it first and later there's a comic obbligato from Skelton and Garrett. The big selling record for this song came from Dinah Shore and Buddy Clark in a duet recorded just before Clark was killed in a plane crash. It's a delightful and bouncy number that readily lends itself to satire. I have bootleg recording of a radio broadcast where Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester do it. Turn that one over in your minds.Topping it all off is a water ballet by Esther and they typically got bigger and better in films as she tried to top herself. Williams was really fortunate that her career was with MGM because it would only be a major studio that would have invested the production values in her films.Because of that this very charming musical comedy holds up very well for today's audience.

Neil Doyle Esther Williams had some fairly amusing comedies in the '40s that had her jumping into a pool every so often to keep her "Million Dollar Mermaid" label intact. She not only swims here, but joins in the fun and even lends herself to a funny rendition of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" with Ricardo Montalban while Red Skelton is doing his own version of the song with Betty Garrett. It's a wacky bit of fun about Red being mistaken for a polo player. He has some wild slapstick scenes--one of which has him joining a bevy of bathing beauties as he attempts to fit into a water ballet (reminiscent of his hijinks in "Bathing Beauty"). His partner in fun is Betty Garrett who delivers her own special brand of comedy with no strain at all. Ricardo Montalban is an excellent foil for Esther's romantic scenes as the wealthy polo player. The blurb on the video jacket offers a quote from the N.Y. Times: "The most entertaining of all the aquatic spectacles in which Esther Williams has starred." 'Nuff said. Enjoy!