What a song and dance! (Singin' In The Rain (DVD))

Member Name: kingfisher111

Product:	Singin' In The Rain (DVD)
Date:	05/10/09 (164 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: lovely family film

Disadvantages: none

I love the old Hollywood musicals and none more so than Singin' in the Rain starring Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds. This lovely film has got it all - romance, comedy and lots of great singing and dancing along with a couple of downpours for good measure! I recently received the DVD of this film for my birthday and the other day we all sat down as a family to watch this great film. Even my four year old daughter really enjoyed it!

Singin' in the Rain (made in 1952) steps back in time to the advent of 'talking films. Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) are big silent movie stars. However, when the movie production company starts to make talking pictures there is a big problem because it soon transpires that Lina's voice is terrible. No one knows what to do about this until Don meets the beautiful Cathy Seldon (Debbie Reynolds). She is also an actress, on the stage, and Don's great friend Cosmo (Donald O'Connor) comes up with the idea that Cathy could be a voiceover for Lina. It sounds like a great idea but of course there are complications along the way, particularly as Don and Cathy are falling in love - much to Lina's disgust! It's all a lot of fun and a very enjoyable storyline to follow.

All four leads are excellent. Gene Kelly is as charismatic as ever with excellent singing and dancing. I also really enjoyed Donald O'Connor as Cosmo and these two actors seem to complement each other very well. The contrast between Cathy and Lina is brilliant too. Cathy is refined, genteel and well spoken whereas Lina is just about the opposite - brash, crass and almost unintelligible! Much of the comedy in the film comes from Jean Hagen's wonderful portrayal of Lina. It is quite sad when you watch this film though, to reflect that apart from Debbie Reynolds, none of these wonderful actors are still alive.

As this film was made well over half a century ago it does feel a little dated but it is interesting to see what counted for special effects in those days. What the fill does have in plenty though is big singing and dancing numbers. There is of course the wonderful scene as Gene Kelly sings the title number 'Singing in the Rain'. This is lovely and had the whole family singing and dancing along with him as he jumps in puddles and gets extremely wet! Another great number is 'Good Morning' which is sang by the three main characters which is a lovely upbeat number. There are times when the storyline does become a bit tenuous almost it seems as an excuse to fit in another big song and dance number. Overall though the music is fantastic and is one of the reasons why this is such a great family film!

There is romance, music and comedy in this film and my two daughters really loved all the funny moments which mainly occurred when Lina was on screen. It is also very funny watching all the initial teething troubles as the studio tries to move over to talking films. The funniest moment id when the sound becomes not synchronised with the image and everyone ends up speaking everyone else's lines - my girls were in hysterics as you might imagine.

We have the two disc special edition DVD which has lots of extras with it. These include:

Two documentaries - The All New What a Glorious Feeling and Musicals Great Musicals! These are both very interesting to watch if you are interested in the great films and musicals made in the mid twentieth century.

There is also excerpts of songs from Herb Brown musicals and something called Scoring Stage session which I have not watched but I assume is something about writing the score! Overall on Disc 2 there is over four hours of additional footage along with an audio commentary and some other short extras on disc 1 so there is an incredible amount to watch all for the price of £5.98 (if you buy from Amazon).

Summary: A great film to watch on a Sunday afternoon when it's raining!