"Royal Wedding" boasts two great dance moments. In the first, Fred Astaire softshoes with a hatrack for a partner. In the other, he literally dances his way completely around a room, from floor to ceiling and back again.
Alas, Astaire's A-game moments aren't enough to distract one from the pitfalls of "Royal Wedding," a thinly-plotted musical with uninspired songs and a cast that ranges from game to gamey. Using the wedding of England's then-Princess Elizabeth as a backdrop, the movie seems to suffer from a terminal case of Anglophilia.
Astaire and Jane Powell are Tom and Ellen Bowen, a brother-and-sister dance team who gladly jump on a boat to escape muggy New York for London, not quite swinging yet but pretty festive what with all this wedding business. Soon, romance is in the air for the dancers as well, as she meets a British lord and he a dancer hopelessly holding out for her fiancé in America.
There's not much else going on here, which is too bad. For while a musical isn't expected to have complex characters or Mamet-style plots, it needs a little something beyond star power to get the audience interested in what's going on. "Royal Wedding" has Astaire and Powell, two terrific performers saddled with bland songs, uninvolving dance numbers, and romantic partners who make incest seem preferable for our heroes.
That's especially true for Peter Lawford, whose last name should have been "Principle" for it certainly applied to him. He plays a caddish lord who sweeps Ellen off her feet. Given that she seems to enjoy the sport of making romantic overtures to men she then abandons, it would probably serve her right to find herself victimized by a non-noble imposter, yet Lawford's character is on the square (he couldn't have played it any other way). Their romance follows a smug and uninteresting course.
Astaire's love interest Anne is played by Sarah Churchill, who dances pleasantly and doesn't look too bad but seems to be cast in an uncomfortably load-bearing role as a nod of American respect to her father Winston, a great man in my eyes but not exactly Michael Redgrave in the actress-siring department.
There's also dull comedy, much of it in the form of Keenan Wynn's dual role as Transatlantic twins who talk past each other in their unconvincing slang. "Dig?" "Pip!" Director Stanley Donan tries to work some humor in the dance routines, but having the Bowens shipboard shimmy shattered by a shaky shipdeck just doesn't work either for laughs or hoofing. Nor do all the nods at stereotypical Brits who say things like "Cheerio" and only seem to live for the chance of waving at the Royal Carriage. While Powell and Astaire do dance well together, the numbers just don't grab you like they should, technically brilliant, perhaps, but unengaging.
No, you basically have just two great solo dance moments in "Royal Wedding." The remarkable thing about the ceiling-dancing number, now that we understand the how of it, is how well Astaire sells it by playing with audience expectation. No sooner are you comfortable with him dancing on one side of the frame then, with a subtle movement to disguise the fact the set has now been turned 90 degrees, he finds another side of the frame to jump upon, looking as natural as Spider-Man in the process. The hatrack dance is even better for my money, an engaging number all the brighter because its presented as a low-key workout even as Astaire manages some more gravity-defying, without the aid of camera tricks this time.
Since one of these numbers later became a vacuum commercial and the other a Lionel Ritchie video, it's nice to see them here as they were originally intended. Even a bad film is redeemed when Astaire gets going, and he does. But otherwise this Royal Wedding is strictly a Camilla rather than a Diana affair.
Alas, Astaire's A-game moments aren't enough to distract one from the pitfalls of "Royal Wedding," a thinly-plotted musical with uninspired songs and a cast that ranges from game to gamey. Using the wedding of England's then-Princess Elizabeth as a backdrop, the movie seems to suffer from a terminal case of Anglophilia.
Astaire and Jane Powell are Tom and Ellen Bowen, a brother-and-sister dance team who gladly jump on a boat to escape muggy New York for London, not quite swinging yet but pretty festive what with all this wedding business. Soon, romance is in the air for the dancers as well, as she meets a British lord and he a dancer hopelessly holding out for her fiancé in America.
There's not much else going on here, which is too bad. For while a musical isn't expected to have complex characters or Mamet-style plots, it needs a little something beyond star power to get the audience interested in what's going on. "Royal Wedding" has Astaire and Powell, two terrific performers saddled with bland songs, uninvolving dance numbers, and romantic partners who make incest seem preferable for our heroes.
That's especially true for Peter Lawford, whose last name should have been "Principle" for it certainly applied to him. He plays a caddish lord who sweeps Ellen off her feet. Given that she seems to enjoy the sport of making romantic overtures to men she then abandons, it would probably serve her right to find herself victimized by a non-noble imposter, yet Lawford's character is on the square (he couldn't have played it any other way). Their romance follows a smug and uninteresting course.
Astaire's love interest Anne is played by Sarah Churchill, who dances pleasantly and doesn't look too bad but seems to be cast in an uncomfortably load-bearing role as a nod of American respect to her father Winston, a great man in my eyes but not exactly Michael Redgrave in the actress-siring department.
There's also dull comedy, much of it in the form of Keenan Wynn's dual role as Transatlantic twins who talk past each other in their unconvincing slang. "Dig?" "Pip!" Director Stanley Donan tries to work some humor in the dance routines, but having the Bowens shipboard shimmy shattered by a shaky shipdeck just doesn't work either for laughs or hoofing. Nor do all the nods at stereotypical Brits who say things like "Cheerio" and only seem to live for the chance of waving at the Royal Carriage. While Powell and Astaire do dance well together, the numbers just don't grab you like they should, technically brilliant, perhaps, but unengaging.
No, you basically have just two great solo dance moments in "Royal Wedding." The remarkable thing about the ceiling-dancing number, now that we understand the how of it, is how well Astaire sells it by playing with audience expectation. No sooner are you comfortable with him dancing on one side of the frame then, with a subtle movement to disguise the fact the set has now been turned 90 degrees, he finds another side of the frame to jump upon, looking as natural as Spider-Man in the process. The hatrack dance is even better for my money, an engaging number all the brighter because its presented as a low-key workout even as Astaire manages some more gravity-defying, without the aid of camera tricks this time.
Since one of these numbers later became a vacuum commercial and the other a Lionel Ritchie video, it's nice to see them here as they were originally intended. Even a bad film is redeemed when Astaire gets going, and he does. But otherwise this Royal Wedding is strictly a Camilla rather than a Diana affair.