The Band Wagon (1953)

The Band Wagon is, for the most part, a very solid and enjoyable movie musical, but it loses its way 2/3 of the way through and never quite regains it. The song and dance numbers are great fun, but they stop having any bearing on the plot about an hour in - and, worse, barely even *interact* with the plot. The only songs or dances in the last 30 minutes or so are ones that are part of the musical-within-a-musical. It becomes just a series of performances with no context to them, so the emotional effect, whether sweet or fun or uplifting, is mostly lost. While I don't always object to that, it was especially disappointing since I was so enamored with the first 2/3 of the movie. The impromptu dance sequence in the park was one of the most beautiful dance numbers I have perhaps ever seen in a movie musical. But it mattered because it had *context*. Strip the movie numbers of their context, even contrived context, and the songs have to be a *whole* lot more entertaining than this to make it matter. 3.5 stars.

Best Part: The dance scene in the park. So beautiful.
Worst Part: The triplets song and dance scene. It made zero sense in the context of the show and was, frankly, extremely creepy, both in the lyrics and in the costumes. Adults dressing and singing as babies will never not be creepy.

Flickchart: #479, below Drive and above Pushing Tin.