Movie #872: Singin' in the Rain

Singin' in the Rain is a musical starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor, Jean Hagen, and Millard Mitchell. 

In the era of silent movies, former vaudevillian Donald Lockwood (Kelly) is at the top of his game. He and his ditzy co-star Lina Lamont (Hagen) rule the box office, and his best friend Cosmo (O'Connor) collaborates on scripts and accompanying music. He and Lena are a rumored couple; they're not, but she believes it, and Don finds himself in a spiral of self-doubt after he meets an actress named Kathy (Reynolds) who puts in perspective exactly what he is: a dancer and stuntman who prances for the camera, but doesn't really act. 

And then a new technology that allows for movies to have recorded sound as well as images shows up, and while studio head R. F. Simpson (Mitchell) wants to be an early adopter, they aren't sure how to do anything with it, Lina can't act or speak especially well, and early screenings of The Dueling Cavalier threaten to end Lockwood's career. He, Kathy, and Cosmo have the brilliant idea to make it a musical, which is great, except Lina can't sing, either. Kathy agrees to dub her voice, on the understanding that it's only happening once and then she'll have her own career, Lina threatens to derail all that by not being quite as dumb as everyone thinks, the truth sets everyone free, Lockwood and Kathy smooch in front of a billboard.

Singin' in the Rain is from the era of musicals where the plot was interrupted every scene or two for a song, rather than later ones like Les Miserables where the songs effectively replaced the dialog. As such, summarizing the movie makes it feel thin, because not a great deal actually happens, but the movie is still pretty long because there's a lot of time taken up in musical numbers (including the big Broadway Ballet in the middle, which is just Lockwood explaining his vision for The Dancing Cavalier and does exactly nothing to further the plot). It's not a million miles from movies like, say, John Wick where much of the movie and indeed what everyone really comes to see is the set pieces (actually, porn works this way, too, there's a thought). 

But you can't say the tunes here aren't catchy. Everyone knows the title song, but "Good Morning" and "Make 'em Laugh" are classics, too. Likewise, there may not be much to it, but the chemistry between Lockwood and O'Connor, Lockwood and Reynolds, all three of them, and even Lamont and Lockwood, makes it all work. Jean Hagen manages to make Lina just hate-able enough to be fun and laughable enough to be funny (and she was nominated for an Oscar for the role), and I appreciate that there's no third-act breakup between Lamont and Lockwood (other than very, very briefly when Lockwood pretends to go along with the whole "you will be Lina's unseen voice forever" thing). 

Musicals of this era can sometimes be hella overlong, but Singin' in the Rain is pretty well paced, probably because it was a movie first (actually a jukebox musical, since it's based largely on songs from Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown's catalog). I'd seen it on stage, but never seen the movie, and it definitely holds up. It's interesting that Hollywood has been making "Hollywood love letter" movies basically all along, too.

My Grade: A-
Rewatch Value: Medium-low

Next up: Skyfall