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Sorry, this movie sucks

As Good As It Gets

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Unless you absolutely love Judy Garland, you can save yourself 100 minutes and just watch the famous song "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe" from The Harvey Girls. I like her, but I'm not in love with her; I haven't watched every one of her films I can get my hands on.If you do love her and decide to watch the full movie, you'll see lots of beautiful costumes by Irene and Helen Rose Valles as Judy travels by train to the Wild West to become a mail order bride. The female travelers on the train have a different goal once they arrive: they want to open a restaurant and boarding house for respectable girls. And by that, I mean they want to have lots of chorus numbers. Ray Bolger, Judy's gangly pal from The Wizard of Oz joins the cast, as does the pouting Angela Lansbury, crotchety Marjorie Main, and willowy Cyd Charisse. It's up to you if you want to sit through this mediocre musical, or if you want to get the gist by watching the three-minute song.

Judy Garland is the female Destry of this movie, a glossy musical western less about settling the range, but bringing hospitality out to the plains. The Harvey Girls are waitresses, brought in to work at the old restaurant chain in major stops for passenger trains after the western plains were settled a bit. Of course, these pretty girls are threats for the saloon girls for the attentions (or pocket books) of the local men, so that's gonna mean trouble.Judy is a demure mail order bride who ends up a waitress when she finds out that her husband to be is Chill Wills, who willingly lets her go. She has an instant rival in the bitchy Angela Lansbury who isn't afraid to ruin a few feathered boas to keep the waitresses from getting in her way. But Lansbury doesn't count on milquetoast Judy in gaining the affections of saloon owner John Hodiak from her. This means war! In the first film where Judy truly got to be a grown-up (at the age of 23!), she shows off more than her vocal talents, but her knack for comedy as well. The catfight scene between Lansbury's saloon girls and the Harvey Girls is especially funny with the sight of Judy standing around in the middle of the ruckus, being practically invisible as everybody but her gets smacked, kicked or thrown across the room. She's also feisty, dealing with stolen steaks so bravely you'd think she was John Wayne protecting the stagecoach as he road across the range.There's a great supporting cast of musical talent, including rubber-legged Ray Bolger, dead-panned Virginia O'Brien and sweet Cyd Charisse. Even raspy voiced Marjorie Main (as the head cook) gets into the singing act, participating in the Oscar Winning number "On the Antison Topeka and the Santa Fe" and being a comical dancer in the "Round and Round" production number. She is hysterical showing the waitresses how to set the table during the title song. Unfortunately, Lansbury (who later showed her singing chops in Broadway musicals) was obviously dubbed, so those who have seen her on stage or heard the cast albums are sure to ask, "Huh?" when her character performs a saloon number.As musicals go, none were more lavish than MGM's, especially those from the Arthur Freed unit. Having proved his metal with Garland the year earlier with "Meet Me in St. Louis", he confirmed it here, although it is George Sidney in the director's chair, not Vincent Minnelli. There would be many more classics from Freed (a few with Garland). and "The Harvey Girls" remains as fresh and entertaining today as it did when it thrilled audiences in 1946.

The Harvey Girls, a film to celebrate the first of the fast food chains which quite frankly would be what the Harvey Restaurant chain was back in the modernizing west. There are folks in the town who don't want to see the Harvey Restaurant established and thereby hangs the tale of this film.Preston Foster is the town boss and John Hodiak runs the saloon. These guys thrive on the town being in the Wild West accent on the wild. Foster's a rather shrewd villain, he realizes that the clean cut virginal Harvey girls who are servers might make the men forget the loose women of the saloon and that if they court and marry them and start raising families, they might demand a little law and order. That would be a disaster for Foster. Better to cut the problem off at the root.Hodiak however is a jaded sort and bored with the loose women of his establishment. In a cinema not under the Code influence, Angela Lansbury and her crew would be prostitutes. He kind of likes the idea of the Harvey Restaurant coming to town and likes it better when Judy Garland comes to town.Judy's come to town as a mail order bride, but when she sees Chill Wills is the prospective groom, both of them decide they're not suited for each other. Hodiak has been writing Wills's letters, a plot device that was used in the Joseph Cotten-Jennifer Jones film Love Letters. If you know about that film, you know how The Harvey Girls turns out.The Harvey Girls has come down in cinema history because of the famous On The Atchison, Topeka, And The Santa Fe number. The song itself won an Academy Award in 1946 for best original song and the number as staged by MGM is one of the longest and most complex in the annals of film. It runs about 20 minutes and just about every member of the cast except Hodiak and Foster get a line or two in the song. Of course it ends with Judy as well it should have.One thing I don't understand though is the under use of both Ray Bolger and Kenny Baker. Bolger of course had co-starred with Judy in The Wizard Of Oz, but he was far more known for being a Broadway star than a film player. He had just come off a big run in the last Rodgers&Hart musical By Jupiter. Kenny Baker was a famous radio singer who also had starred on Broadway in Kurt Weill's One Touch Of Venus with Mary Martin. Why these guys got the supporting roles they did is a mystery to me. I suspect both of them had a lot of their parts end up on the cutting room floor.MGM editing mastery was at its best in The Harvey Girls. The film was partially done on location and partially done at Culver City. The editing is so smooth you really can't tell.Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer wrote the score for The Harvey Girls and while the Atchison number dwarfs the rest, there's a song called It's A Great Big World that gets sadly neglected. It was sung by Judy Garland, Virginia O'Brien, and someone dubbing Cyd Charisse who first got noticed in this film for her dancing.As I said before if done today if some gazillionaire would finance a remake, Angela and her saloon girls would be portrayed more frankly as working girls. But that would also cause the film to lose some of its naive charm. And this film holds up quite well for 63 years and counting.

I really enjoyed this one, perfect hot lazy Saturday afternoon entertainment for me. Judy Garland as always is a treat to watch. This time the songbook isn't too memorable (apart from that great ensemble number near the beginning), and John Hodiak is sort of creepy as her leading man (his teeth and moustache look weird--he has none of the earthy sexuality of "Lifeboat"), but nevertheless I thought it was pretty good. It had enough humour, spots of melodrama and light musical numbers to keep me interested throughout. Plus, the colour is gorgeous, looking fantastic there on my HD TV. A young Cyd Charisse plays one of the "Harvey Girls", and she doesn't really get much of a chance to display her dancing talents, but she's still lovely to watch. Hard to believe Angela Lansbury was so young when she made this movie (early 20's I believe). Why did they turn her into a madam before her time? George Sidney, reliable MGM hand, directs and it's some of the best work I've seen from him yet. Apart from the ballads, the musical numbers are very fluid.