Movie Review Carefree

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1938 – Spoiler alerts One of the later and sadly worst of the Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers comedy musicals. It was the first to lose money and it is easy to see why. The lack of song & Dance routines is very apparent with only four songs (composed by Irving Berlin) in the film. Only ‘Won’t You Change Partners And Dance With Me’ is remotely memorable and that was apparently composed some years before with the others being rushed out in days (it shows). ‘The Yam’ is a song about The Yam being a new dance craze, but it failed to catch on. Fred realized it was crap and refused to sing it at all so Ginger performs it alone (with Fred just joining in the closing moments of the dance steps). ‘Since They Turned Loch Lomond Into Swing’ has a clever dance routine for Fred involving golf clubs but the song is not remotely memorable. ‘I Used To Be Colour Blind’ was originally intended to be filmed in colour in the otherwise Black & White movie but the budget wouldn’t allow it. Where the film really dies is in the plot which actually gets offensive and could even be a text book movie for the modern Me Too movement. I can’t see it getting past the pitch meetings today. Fred plays a Freudian psychiatrist. His best mate, played by Ralph Bellamy is a raging alcoholic (drunk even in the opening scene) who goes to Fred to arrange therapy sessions for his girlfriend (Ginger) because she keeps refusing to marry him. Fred immediately assumes the girl must be a problem, ignoring the alcoholism as an obvious reason why. Ginger turns up for her first therapy session, headstrong, independent, cynical, and understandably angry with her boyfriend. Fred unfortunately falls in love with her himself but still tries to straighten her out. He starts virtually stalking her, turning up at her family social events, talking freely to everyone about her with no regard for patient confidentiality, etc. Fred tries hypnotizing her to get her to date him, but when this is interrupted, Ginger flounces out in a trance, disrupting traffic, kicking a cripple’s walking stick to make him fall over (abuse of the disabled is always good for a laugh – not!), destroys her own radio career, and steals a cop’s nightstick with which she shatters a shop window. Only Fred manipulating her boyfriend into paying the damages keeps her out of jail. The boyfriend does have the sense to get Fred a restraining order though, which Fred promptly ignores, and even stalks Ginger to a party attended by the very judge who issued the restraint. Fred again hypnotizes Ginger, making her dance with him like a rag doll object. Unfortunately she then decides in her confusion to kill him, and chases him round a crowded clay pigeon shooting tournament course with a shotgun, in effect nearly leading to a mass shooting incident. The finale gets really extreme by today’s standards. To snap Ginger out of her confusion, Fred realizes he has to punch her unconscious (yes really), but can’t go through with it. The boyfriend tries punching him and accidentally ends up giving Ginger the knockout punch instead. The final shot is Ginger, now pacified and googly eyed in obedience to her superior man, marrying Fred even proudly showing off her black eye. Hardly a political correct message there. This film is appalling in just about every respect. Arthur Chappell