Royal Wedding
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Fred Astaire, Jane Powell, Keenan Wynn, Peter Lawford, Sarah ChurchillDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 93 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-05-15
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Good Times Video
Movie Reviews of Royal Wedding
Movie Review: A Lotta Dance for Your Dime
Summary: 5 Stars
The release of "Royal Wedding,' in 1951, fifteen years after the last of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers films at poverty-stricken RKO Radio Pictures, finds many changes from Astaire's previous work. He's now at powerhouse MGM Studios, where they boasted of more stars than there were in heaven. Where musicals were a specialty-- after all, they had Stanley Donen, a talented director of musicals, though they didn't have Ginger Rogers -- and where all pictures, let alone musicals, were in brightly saturated color. So Astaire costars with Jane Powell, an MGM starlet rather typical of the studio's post-war crop, in brightly saturated color; Stanley Donen contributes his usual artful direction. The whole thing, songs and all, is written by anglophile American Alan Jay Lerner, still five years before his smash Broadway hit, cowritten with Frederick Loewe, the anglophile's dream, "My Fair Lady."
Astaire and Powell costar as a successful brother-sister team of hoofers, just winding up a Broadway engagement in the dog days of summer. London calls, there's a royal wedding on, as Princess (later to be Queen) Elizabeth is marrying; and the pair is happy to hop the next boat crossing the pond. The plot actually follows real life: Astaire first achieved stardom dancing with his sister Adele; but she left the act to marry an English lord, as will the Jane Powell character. Peter Lawford plays the lucky lord. Keenan Wynn plays a dual part, the agent-twins, Irving and Edgar Klinger, one based in New York, the other in London, with, supposedly, the accents to match. (Something must have been lost in translation here, is all I can say.) Sarah Churchill plays the plucky Englishwoman who steps into the act as the sister's replacement. And yes, she's the daughter of England's great wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, but, unfortunately that doesn't make her a great dancer. She's also too tall for Astaire, even in the flats she constantly wears, and they ain't got no chemistry.
But the movie boasts four terrific dance numbers, and two that are merely fine. Astaire's solo in the gym of the cruise ship is a knockout. His hotel room solo, up, down and around, walls and ceiling, has left generations gasping for breath. His "I Left My Heart in Haiti,' is a big, colorful, old school production number. And "How Could You Believe Me," his biggest duet with Powell, owes a lot to vaudeville, and even more to the American writer Damon Runyon: it's got charm to burn. Powell's a more than competent dancer, especially since scuttlebutt says she had no rehearsal time with Astaire before filming started. She also has a fine soprano voice: listen as she sinks her teeth into one of Lerner's trademark big ballads, "Too Late Now." And then there's the pair's opening duet, "Every Night at 7," and their witty dance on the turbulent, rolling ship. It's just a lotta dance for your dime.
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