Top Hat

My first encounter with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, this does not make me look forward to any others. The plot is paper thin and rests upon a simple, easily clarified misunderstanding – Astaire’s dancer Jerry Travers falls for Rogers’ Dale Tremont staying in the hotel room below his, but she thinks he is married to a friend of hers and rebukes his advances. Every plot point, from their initial meeting (he is dancing in his room, alone, for no reason, waking her up, so he dances on sand to not make any noise, instead of, I don’t know, just not dancing) seems to have been contrived simply to show off the dance skills of the two leads. Seeing as I’m incapable of telling good dancing from bad, or even if the dancers are in time to the music, this is entirely lost on me, the dance sequences left me bored and awaiting a scene where someone didn’t spontaneously burst into song for no apparent reason.

Choose life 5/10