This is one of those breezy mid-forties musical romances that would never be made today because it would never find an audience, but which is still loved by a reasonably large core of classic movie/musical fans. Featuring the only original score by the celebrated musical duo of Rodgers & Hammerstein, the songs are surprisingly nondescript. Even Oscar winner "It Might As Well Be Spring" fades from the memory quickly. What the film does have going for it is its lush use of technicolour, its upbeat tempo, the ravishingly beautiful Jeanne Crain, and a relatively young and problem-free Dana Andrews.
The story is pure Americana hokum, nothing more than a convenient totem around which the players sing and dance. Ma (Faye Bainter) and Pa (Charles Winninger), Frake head off to the State Fair to enter their pickles and mincemeat and boars into its competitions while son Wayne (Dick Haymes) and daughter Margy (Crain) tag along and get themselves involved in romantic situations with a singer (Vivian Blaine) and a streetwise reporter (Andrews). Wayne falls in love, Margy falls in love, Ma and Pa are already in love, even the boar falls in love.
Dana Andrews sings only a couple of lines in this film, and it's a strange thing to see. Apparently his voice was dubbed even for these few lines, which is ironic, because Andrews was actually a classically trained singer. He and Crain work well together as an odd couple city boy and farm girl but Crain looks so hot in a big-girl-in-a-little-girl's-dress sort of way that you can understand a city slicker like Pat Gilbert falling for her. With her vivid red lips and cover girl looks, she looks too glamorous to be a farm girl but you get the impression that was the producer's idea. She was the 'wholesome' fantasy while redhead Blaine, who invites Margy's brother back to her apartment after she has chased off the guests at her party, was the more earthy actuality. She's married and she blows him out in the end, resulting in one of mainstream Hollywood musical's more bizarre endings when Wayne simply picks up with the hometown girl he was so willing to dump just a couple of scenes before. How that one got by the censors is a mystery it's almost as if a couple of scenes have mistakenly been left on the cutting room floor. Donald Meek makes a humorous appearance, and studio drifter Frank McHugh wanders over from Universal for a welcome visit. In fact, everyone gives a reasonable performance here, which helps make the strictly sentimental nonsense on offer vastly more palatable than it might otherwise have been.
The story is pure Americana hokum, nothing more than a convenient totem around which the players sing and dance. Ma (Faye Bainter) and Pa (Charles Winninger), Frake head off to the State Fair to enter their pickles and mincemeat and boars into its competitions while son Wayne (Dick Haymes) and daughter Margy (Crain) tag along and get themselves involved in romantic situations with a singer (Vivian Blaine) and a streetwise reporter (Andrews). Wayne falls in love, Margy falls in love, Ma and Pa are already in love, even the boar falls in love.
Dana Andrews sings only a couple of lines in this film, and it's a strange thing to see. Apparently his voice was dubbed even for these few lines, which is ironic, because Andrews was actually a classically trained singer. He and Crain work well together as an odd couple city boy and farm girl but Crain looks so hot in a big-girl-in-a-little-girl's-dress sort of way that you can understand a city slicker like Pat Gilbert falling for her. With her vivid red lips and cover girl looks, she looks too glamorous to be a farm girl but you get the impression that was the producer's idea. She was the 'wholesome' fantasy while redhead Blaine, who invites Margy's brother back to her apartment after she has chased off the guests at her party, was the more earthy actuality. She's married and she blows him out in the end, resulting in one of mainstream Hollywood musical's more bizarre endings when Wayne simply picks up with the hometown girl he was so willing to dump just a couple of scenes before. How that one got by the censors is a mystery it's almost as if a couple of scenes have mistakenly been left on the cutting room floor. Donald Meek makes a humorous appearance, and studio drifter Frank McHugh wanders over from Universal for a welcome visit. In fact, everyone gives a reasonable performance here, which helps make the strictly sentimental nonsense on offer vastly more palatable than it might otherwise have been.