Connianatu How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Charles Herold (cherold) Even by the standards of Astaire musicals, this story is pretty dumb, with Astaire an engaged gambler who meets and falls for dance teacher Rogers.As usual, there are amusing bit players, most notably Eric Blore, and some good songs, including A Fine Romance and Pick Yourself Up.I always feel I should enjoy Astaire more than I actually do - his tap dance/ballroom style never excited my as much as Gene Kelly's more balletic approach. The best number is the Bojangles one, which is beautifully done but unfortunately, the blackface forces one to ponder the peculiarities of white entertainers pretending to be happy-go- lucky black ones.The movie is likable but gets increasingly nonsensical, moving from satisfyingly silly to annoyingly silly. I don't really think any of it made much sense.Still, if you're an Astaire/Rogers fan, or just a fan of dopey but well done musicals, you should probably check this one out.

Christopher Reid This is the first Astaire/Rogers film I've seen and I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. The dancing is great, of course. They seem to float or glide above the floor. I was impressed by both of them, the way they make it look so effortless. It's exciting and makes you want to get up and somehow be a part of it. They spin so quickly but their heads remain steady and controlled. Rogers never seems to hold onto Astaire but is always in the right place. She contacts him via her waist and with that connection they seem to get all the leverage they need.I enjoyed the Jerome Kern songs. They're catchy and memorable in a nice way. I liked some of the locations, outside in the snow, the dance studio and the stages. It was cool seeing the three shadows dancing above Astaire. They eventually diverge from his actions and then you realise he's been dancing in sync with a pre-recorded silhouette the whole time. Some of the comedy moments were quite good, especially with the supporting cast. I loved the dance lessons manager and the dirty looks he gave to his employees as they kept being negative towards customers.But other aspects didn't impress me as much. The love story is very thin and artificial. It feels completely arbitrary. It's given no meaning or significance. Both lovers end up easily getting engaged to people they apparently don't love. Their friends have no problem sabotaging their weddings for personal benefit. It didn't strike me as funny so much as flippant. Astaire makes me smile or laugh occasionally but not enough. I also didn't like the gambling. It's highly unrealistic and promotes a dangerous habit. Bond movies are different somehow, they're more psychological and sexy. This movie feels too random and I found I didn't like all of the humour and had to keep waiting for the brilliant dance sequences.I didn't even notice it but the dances are generally filmed in continuous takes and capture the full bodies of the performers. One scene uses a crane to go from a lower stage to a higher one. No cutting away to an audience or close-ups of faces or legs. It goes to show that good film-making is seamless and makes you forget you're watching a movie. All I remember about the dances is how fun and incredible they were. If they were badly filmed, I would have been distracted and picked up on many little details.I'm looking forward to seeing more Astaire/Rogers movies. I did enjoy Swing Time but it seems flawed to me. I don't think the duo is great at comedy. It's too obvious or predictable. Astaire keeps pulling funny faces and only some of them surprise me or feel like genuine character moments. With Keaton and Chaplin, you always sensed the love in their films was sincere. Their characters were truly affected by things. They never simply played to the audience.But Astaire and Rogers seem more like cartoon characters. Frivolous and back to square one after each scene. Maybe they're together, maybe they're apart. I guess I'll just try to enjoy the jokes and singing and dancing along the way.

johndoc-97610 As a movie, this is a real stinker. The plot premise (the rapid movement from dislike to romance) is bad enough, but not uncommon, but the pairing of 60 year old (and looking every day of it) Victor Moore as best bud of Fred is laughable. No wait, the pairing of Helen Broderick as best bud of Ginger now that's laughable. Both of these actors have the presence of a block of wood on the screen.So why watch it? People who know dance (I'm not one of them), say that 3 of the 10 greatest dances ever filmed appear here. I wouldn't know but the dancing is spectacular, for me, particularly the dance to "Pick Yourself Up".Also, arguably, the movie introduces 3 songs that are solid members of the Great American Songbook. Great Jerome Kern / Dorothy Fields collaborations of "The Way You Look Tonight" (the Oscar winner and only award of this stiff), the aforementioned "Pick Yourself Up" and "A Fine Romance". 3!!!! So watch. The dance is great; the music is great. Watching the plot and the clunky sidekicks bumble through this film is like watching a train wreck. Three great songs and three great dances deserved a better vehicle.

mark.waltz While "The Gay Divorcée" and "Top Hat" remain listed on the top of the Astaire/Rogers pairings, I feel that it is "Swing Time" that is their greatest. It starts off winningly with Fred pretending to be a klutz of a dancer so he can get a lesson from the pretty Ginger, resulting in the revealing "Pick Yourself Up" where all of a sudden he breaks into a tap and shows her that he's no clod with two left feet. Their romance is the epitome of what Katharine Hepburn said to describe them: "She gave him sex; he gave her class." Indeed, Fred is an odd looking leading man-extremely skinny with thinning hair and a long face that manages to glow when he smiles. Their romance blooms into a fabulous dance partnership which opens a nightclub, and on the night of their opening, the fiancée (Betty Furness) he forgot to mention shows up. While the plot doesn't sound like much, it is the presentation which makes it a classic. Astaire and Rogers get to sing and dance quite elegantly to the Oscar Winning "The Way You Look Tonight" then spar to "A Fine Romance", one of the great comedy duets ever performed on stage or screen. Astaire puts on black-face in the brilliantly staged "Bojangles of Harlem" which has some brilliant musical cords, and even if the manner in which is presented is quite controversial today, it remains one of his greatest solo numbers. The comedy relief is provided by wise-cracking Helen Broderick (returning from "Top Hat") and Victor Moore, the cutest chubby character actor to make it big on stage and screen. He was already a legend on Broadway when he made this, and the success of this lead to him being given some leading roles in a few "B" programmers, two of which co-starred the wonderful Broderick. When people speak of Eve Arden as the great wise-cracker of the silver screen, they need to remember that Broderick was around before, and while not as glamorous as Arden, she often stole every scene she was in.Add in fussy Eric Blore as the head of the dance agency where Rogers and Broderick worked in the opening segment, and you have a consistently entertaining film which has stood the test of time. A Broadway version of this ("Never Gonna Dance") was underrated when it opened in 2002 and closed quickly; Perhaps fans felt why look for phony Astaire and Rogers when the real thing is easily available. But the show was elegantly staged, and even if unnecessary, provided me with an evening of entertainment that I will never forgot. It's ironic, however, that the supporting characters got the best notices, with former Broadway leading lady Karen Ziemba tossing off sardonic comments in the Broderick role (and receiving a Tony nomination) and Peter Bartlett in the small role that Blore played. To play on the character's obvious feminine traits, the name of the character was changed to "Pangborn" in honor of that hysterically funny portrayer of sissy characters (Franklin Pangborn), and it remained one of the show's highlights. When the leads broke into "The Way You Look Tonight", I could hear a gasp of recognition from the older ladies in the audience, and I knew that if it didn't strike the critics, it certainly won them over.Technically, "Swing Time" is an absolutely perfect film with a great art decco set and quick editing in the musical numbers to make them move rather than just stand still. The costumes are all exceptional, and with the fantastic songs and choreography, everything simply comes together. This is the film where I think that Astaire and Rogers have the best chemistry, and even Moore and Broderick with their major age difference come off romantic as well, certainly no Fred and Ethel Mertz. It is obvious that everybody was having fun, even if the hard work shows, and that makes for one of the very best original movie musicals ever made.