Scanialara
You won't be disappointed!
Afouotos
Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.
Keeley Coleman
The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;
jc-osms
As Fred Astaire moved into his 50's, rather than team him with mature female dancers closer to his own age, Hollywood decided instead to pair him with younger girls. However the problem arose as how to depict his relationship with actresses so much younger than him, never more so than in this movie, where as a bored billionaire on a "poverty tourism" visit to France he meets a gamine young orphan girl in the form of Leslie Caron and forms an immediate attraction to her so that within days he's jetted her off to the good life in uptown New York, setting her up in beautiful clothes and at the best college, with nary a thought for the young orphans she's been bringing up and who get left behind. So straight away we get that this isn't just a piece of philanthropy by Fred's Jervis Pendleton, else why not do a Madonna or Angelina and adopt a much younger child, even a boy.I have to state, it makes the film a little problematic to watch in these more cynical and sinister times, where nice old Uncle Fred's Daddy Longlegs schtick can look ever so slightly like grooming, especially the way he uses his influence to exile a more youthful admirer for Caron' Julie Andre character's affections. Indeed it's a problem the film itself realises given the numerous times that Pendleton's motives are called into question by those around him. And as for young Julie's attraction for an old-timer, that can be answered by the question "So just what attracted you to the billionaire Jervis Pendleton?"Of course plot matters much less to musicals than to almost any other movie genre you could mention here, so long as there are compensations in the dance numbers and soundtrack itself, but these too are a mixed bag too. The duo's romantic dance to by far the best number "Something's Gotta Give" can't quite compensate for Fred elsewhere getting down with the youth to a song and dance called the Sloo-foot, while Caron's first imaginings of Daddy L is embarrassingly bad especially when Fred has to play a big-time Texan oil-baron in a terrible hoe-down sequence. Them there's Caron's "nightmare ballet" sequence, a too obvious tilt at artistic pretension in the wake Gene Kelly's "An American In Paris".Lesser things I did enjoy were the interplay of Fred's two hired hands, the frosty Fred Clark and the feisty Thelma Ritter also the 50's New York settings, but in truth Astaire looks like a man out of time here in a film which, colourful and bright as it is on the surface is rather shallow and unengaging just below it.
selffamily
Let me say to begin with that I really like both Leslie Caron and Fred Astaire. That however is really where it ends too as the story doesn't work. I have read the other reviews that he was 55 and she 24 but in the film She is 18, however old he is, and he is using his money to manipulate her. Yes I get that it's a light hearted film but wait, what if it were your daughter? My second question is - why America? why not send her to Paris to study - instead she diminishes her own style and personality by going to a US college. I couldn't see the reasoning behind the film, apart from old man meets girl, and I'm sad that two great talents - not to mention all the worthy supporting players - were wasted in this.
Enough to make you sleep? Afraid I did, and missed a small part of it. No regrets there.
writers_reign
I've never been much of an admirer of Lesley Caron but it's undeniable that she does possess the required ingenuousness for the role of an orphan doubling as Cinderella. Jean Webster's novel has been adapted many times not least as a stage Musical, Love From Judy, in the late forties. The natural warmth, charm and grace of Fred Astaire have seldom been better displayed, grace under pressure if you will given that his wife had died only recently. We don't hear enough of Johnny Mercer's great ballad Dream (which was not written for the film) but we do get Something's Gotta Give. As usual Fred dances so effortlessly that you wonder why the second-stringers like Kelly, Daily, Nelson etc even bother. Thelma Ritter could have been given a little more but she clicks with the little she does get and all in all this is a minor charmer.
movibuf1962
Let's begin with the obvious: the complaints about the age difference between Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron. Yes, there is one. But I think there's a night-and-day difference between this film and, say, 'Charade' or 'Entrapment' when the leading man is grandfatherly and the leading lady is a sweet young thing, and we're not supposed to notice. The brilliant thing about DLL is that the age difference, or discrepancy, is front and center at the plot of the film. But the film broaches this rather sticky material in a very chaste and innocent way. After seeing her from afar as a teenager, Astaire's courtship with Caron becomes anonymous. For two years. The film's first masterstroke comes in the guise of Thelma Ritter acting as an armchair Cupid. Through a gentle push on her part we begin to see the pair finally interact. (And when they first dance together, it isn't even real.) Astaire also attempts nobility- several times!! But everything is in an elegant and tasteful courtship, leading up to the stunning rooftop turn of "Something's Gotta Give." I didn't like the Roland Petit ballet towards the end of the film as much as others did, just because I felt that the point of loss had been beaten to death. But the ending is especially fine because two love stories resolve instead of just one. And how cool is it to dance with someone on your roof terrace, step into your hat, spin into your wrap, and dance out the front door?!!
