(Review originally written at 17 December 2007)
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
This is a rare movie in which Judy Garland doesn't sign but it also isn't exactly her best one.
It features a very simple boy meets girl story, set in the Big Apple but it was all shot in a California - Hollywood studio by the way. The movie mostly tries to be different by putting in a lot of fun and makes the story seem like an adventure set in the big city. But no, the movie doesn't feature enough of those 'adventures' events and entertaining characters to let this style completely work out. It's the sort of musical movie making-style, only just without the songs this time. No wonder, since Vincente Minnelli was at the helm of this movie. The sort of 'happy' and 'joy' atmosphere of the movie also makes this feel like a very outdated one already. Who knows, perhaps Americans just needed this sort of movies to cheer up and make you forget everything for a while, during the WW II war period. Guess the movie of course also had some propaganda reasons, to show how great- and what very friendly lads the soldiers were.
The movie is from the period when it was still OK to marry a person, after only knowing that person for one day. It was considered cute and ultimately romantic and acceptable for a movie to feature. Nowdays, this sort of scenario is hardly unbelievable of course, even for the die hard romantics and dreamers.
For me it also didn't helped much that the characters weren't played by the two most attractive persons of that time. Judy Garland looked beautiful in some of her roles but this wasn't one of those. Robert Walker was already 37 at the time of this movie, which just makes him a bit too old for his role. On top of that, he just wasn't on the list of greatest actors of his time.
It's an OK enough enjoyable movie to kill some time with but don't expect to be blown away- or taken completely away by the story and movie.
6/10
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