4/10
But it's a WASP-y collection of actors
7 May 2009
This movie seems like a good idea -- debunking myths and defusing prejudice, showing us all how diverse America is -- but it also begs the question of why nearly all the main characters are WASPs (okay, except for S.Z. Sakall)! Janet Leigh is lovely in the Hungarian-Greek love story, but why not cast someone Hungarian, or at least Eastern European? And Gene Kelly as a Greek (speaking, by the way, with a perfect American accent, but a few stiff phrases thrown in to show he's a foreigner)? Fredric March as an Italian father (named Esposito?) ... and the list goes on. All wonderful actors, but miscast in this. Not only are all the actors as white as snow, the rhetoric is pretty heavy-handed, too. I love many of the old Hollywood movies, but this one could have used a more realistic approach. The '50s were a strange time in American film, as in American life. Everything and everybody were supposed to be sparklingly clean and chipper all the time. We had to wait until the '60s for a wrench to be thrown into those oh-so-smoothly-functioning works ...
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