Cinema: New Picture, Jan. 2, 1950

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...

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