Review of It's Always Fair Weather

When I first watched "It's always fair weather" I expected it to be another 1950's typical Hollywood musical, and in some sense I was correct. Not being musically gifted myself, I find it hard to sit through an hour watching someone else sing, if I wanted that I would go to the opera. I don't mind musicals such as The Wizard of Oz, Mary Poppins, or Charlie and the Chocolate factory, since I've never had the chance or the inclination to watch "Singing in the Rain" I really can't compare performances. In the movie, three soldiers returning from World War II, promise to meet up in their favorite bar, ten years down the road. Ignoring the bartenders scoffs, that they will never remember, they make a pact… each vowing to return with their dreams played out. Ten years pass, and the waited day arrives, only one of the three seems to have remembered, the other two through a series of luck, happen to be in the city that exact day, and head to the bar. It seems to me that the one who purposely came back, may have remembered because he wanted to show his two friends, that he, in his simple married life, has everything he ever dreamed of. His two friends, who had forgotten about the meeting, may have subliminally been making the decision not to show up, since their life was not the way they had hoped it would be ten years ago. The show also seems to project the fear that Hollywood had of television in the early half of the twentieth century, portraying the television show (on which the friends are going to be reunited) as a frivolous show, headed by a bunch of money/publicity hungry people. Quite like Hollywood at the same time, if truth be told. This portrayal shows how Hollywood felt threatened by the emergence of television and television show.