The Theater: Musical Stages

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THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT, PART 2 Directed by GENE KELLY

Material is running scarce. For this sequel to the successful and wistful anthology of big moments from MGM musicals, Gene Kelly has been compelled to enlarge the working definition of "entertainment." This compendium, casual and diverting, still contains a lot of song-and-dance footage. There are, however, frequent excursions into light comedy and heavy melodrama. "It's all entertainment," the narration implies. That is a fair enough generalization, but hardly a unifying theme. There is probably no coherent way to bring together Fred Astaire and Lassie, Judy Garland and Johnny Weissmuller. The strain shows.

Hoof and Croon. Kelly has directed some new sequences to introduce the film clips, pleasant interludes sung and danced by the director and Fred Astaire, appearing together for the first time in a movie since they did The Babbit and the Bromide in Ziegfeld Follies (1946). Astaire is 77 but retains his very particular charm. He is part boulevardier, part made-in-U.S.A. naïf. Kelly, 63 and still able to dance in and out of rain puddles better than anyone else ony earth, stages these hoof-and-croon sessions with roughhouse smoothness. Among the assorted clips are mini-homages to Frank Sinatra and Tracy-Hepburn. There are a few surprises too. The best is a glimpse of Kiss Me, Kate (1953), featuring Bob Fosse, years before he became a director or even a choreographer, dancing with sinewy grace.

Like its predecessor, That's Entertainment, Part 2 is heavy with show biz nostalgia that could be dispensed, like programs or refreshment, out in the lobby. The movie takes it for granted that everyone in the audience will grow misty-eyed over these snatches of glory past. What is more saddening, however, is that the musical form has stayed stubbornly stuck; its evolution ended, apparently, in mid-1950s Hollywood.

Attempts to use real contemporary music in musicals—like Richard Lester's two Beatles movies or Ken Russell's Tommy—have been random. A Chorus Line, hottest ticket on Broadway and destined to be filmed, is just a slick version of 1930s tears-and-tinsel show biz sagas around which production numbers were draped like rented furs. The only enterprising recent musicals have been the work of Bob Fosse; the movie Cabaret and, on Broadway, Chicago abound in the same spunk and brash vi tality eulogized in That's Entertainment. Fosse is a brilliantly low-down spirit, an innovator, but he too has forsaken movie musicals for more serious undertakings, like Lenny.

Until the Hollywood musical finds another champion, it will be good-willed into a stupor by tributes like this one. There were wonderful moments, many on view here: Kelly spinning on roller skates in It's Always Fair Weather;

Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis comforting Margaret O'Brien with Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas; Astaire romancing Cyd Charisse in Central Park in The Band Wagon. Great scenes, and familiar ones. Now it is time to move on.

Jay Cocks