A jolly musical featuring a great double act in the pairing of Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, who don't share quite as many song-and-dance numbers as you'd expect. ANCHORS AWEIGH charts the boisterous misadventures of a pair of sailors (Kelly and Sinatra) on three-day shore leave and the trouble that seems to follow them around.
The sole problem with this movie is that it's overlong and, as is so often the case, it gets bogged down in an unnecessary romance around the halfway mark. It needed a little more music, a little more oomph, to make it truly great. Still, there's plenty to enjoy here, not least a wonderful performance from an agile and exuberant Gene Kelly, who outdoes Sinatra at every turn.
The highlights of the movie are a couple of fantasy sequences. In one of them, a Spanish-themed interlude, we see Kelly serenading love interest Kathryn Grayson. However, it's the other moment, in which he enters an animated world and dances with Jerry from the TOM AND JERRY cartoons, which is the real highlight and a moment of pure brilliance. I always thought this kind of live action and animation mixing didn't occur until the days of WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? but it looks like I was wrong; this dance is the icing on a slightly stodgy, but very tasty, cake.
The sole problem with this movie is that it's overlong and, as is so often the case, it gets bogged down in an unnecessary romance around the halfway mark. It needed a little more music, a little more oomph, to make it truly great. Still, there's plenty to enjoy here, not least a wonderful performance from an agile and exuberant Gene Kelly, who outdoes Sinatra at every turn.
The highlights of the movie are a couple of fantasy sequences. In one of them, a Spanish-themed interlude, we see Kelly serenading love interest Kathryn Grayson. However, it's the other moment, in which he enters an animated world and dances with Jerry from the TOM AND JERRY cartoons, which is the real highlight and a moment of pure brilliance. I always thought this kind of live action and animation mixing didn't occur until the days of WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? but it looks like I was wrong; this dance is the icing on a slightly stodgy, but very tasty, cake.