On the Town (MGM) brings airy imagination and solid showmanship to the kind of movie that needs it most: the musical. The film avoids such standard cine-musical trappings as hothouse splendor, the lumbering backstage story and the curious notion that the script ought to give performers a pseudo-logical excuse to burst into song & dance. Instead, by combining a fluid cinematic approach and slick Broadway professionalism, Co-Directors Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen have turned out a film so exuberant that it threatens at moments to bounce right off the screen.
Adapted by Adolph...