Royal Wedding

In a long and illustrious career, a generational talent like Fred Astaire is going to have some forgettable movies. This is probably one of those movies. There is nothing particularly bad about the movie, there just isn’t anything particularly amazing about it either. It tells a cute little story reasonably well and displays some sides to Astaire’s dancing that are absent in his bigger hits… and that’s about it.

Not surprisingly, the stand out element of the film is in its dance sequences. Of the Astaire movies I’ve seen, this movie is the most interesting and inventive with its choreography. Sure, his collaborations with Ginger Rogers are loaded with numerous numbers demonstrating a mastery of a plethora of styles, from tap to dance hall, but this movie gets creative with the environments, props, and staging of the dance in a way that is wholly its own.

For example, there is a piece which is excellent prop work in a shipboard gym, where he finds interesting and artful ways of dancing with everything from weight machines to speed bags. There is another where the rocking waves of the ocean create an uneven and shifting floor area where the set and the dance itself can slide back and forth, creating a lot of unique moments of both movement and humor. And, of course, there is the film’s pièce de résistance: a solo dance where Astaire appears to dance from the floor, to the walls, and eventually to the ceiling.

The story is fairly forgettable. There are a brother/sister duo that seem attached to the single, vagabond lifestyle of the traveling performer and through tried and true romantic comedy setups find themselves falling in love with people who force them to reconsider that position. There are also some small bits of cleverness, such as a discussion of falling in love feeling like dancing on the ceiling foreshadowing the previously mentioned dance scene which visualizes that very concept, but overall the structure of the film is nothing to write home about.

The same can be said for just about everything else in the film. For example, despite being directed by Stanley Doonan, the genius behind movies like On the Town, Singing in the Rain, and Charade, the direction and cinematography outside the musical numbers is nothing particularly noteworthy.

In short, the movie offers some of the most unique dance choreography of Astaire’s film career, with a particular focus on integrating setting and props into the pierce, but beyond that it isn’t anything particularly special.

Would Recommend: If you are intrigued by the singular nature of the film’s few splashes of choreographic brilliance.

Would Not Recommend: If you are only interested in watching a great performer’s best work.