One Paragraph Movie Review: An American In Paris

Fourteenth film: An American In Paris. As filled as this film is with Gershwin and jazz ballet, I expected to love the effing eff out of it, but oh my goddddd I hated it so much. It explains why La La Land left me frigid as well. Even taking into account the fact that I’ve only ever liked four musicals and that feminism was different in 1951 (“How’d you come by all these worldly possessions, a rich husband or a rich father?” “Father”), this is about Gene Kelly playing a very terrible painter who harasses a girl with zero personality until she agrees to cheat on her fiance with him, all the while using a patroness who has a crush on him for studio space and limo rides. Plus jazz ballet. The only two highlights are a superbly meta tap-dance about tap-dancing with bonus Parisian street urchins (the second worst kind of street urchins) and an orchestral Gershwin mash-up daydream. The closing 18-minute recap ballet is a chore, including the Toulouse Lautrec bit where Gene Kelly is ostensibly dressed as a penis. One step-ball-change-sudden-dramatic-face out of five. Ugh.