We’ve finally done it folks, we’ve finally gotten to a movie that’s not only in color but also in English! We’re still in 1952, but I’ll take what I can get as Singin’ in the Rain was admittedly a very fun watch.

Singin’ in the Rain opens up on the red carpet of a Hollywood premier in the 20s. This is where we meet the majority of our main ensemble: the leading man with the voice to go along – Don Lockwood; his rambunctious and overly eager sidekick – Cosmo Brown; and the (not so) lovely – Lina Lamont. We find out fairly quickly that ol’ Donnie Lockwood is a bit of a shyster. We listen to him regale his loving fans with the tale of his learn-ed background only to be shown the real story of him and Cosmo slumming it up and doing everything they can to make it to stardom. When Donnie says he studied at Julliard, he really means he was dancing for pennies on a bar room floor; when he says he toured the world performing at only the most prestigious stages, he really means that he was strapping himself to various motorized vehicles and risking his life as a stuntman. This brazen lifestyle certainly worked out for Donnie and Cosmo. Well, it did for Don, Cosmo seems to be riding coattails a little. We also soon find out that Don’s costar and presumed love interest, Lina, sucks super hard. She’s ditzy to the max, narcissistic, and – worst of all – has the most annoying voice I’ve ever heard in a movie.

After learning that our trio is more than meets the eye, we get a brief preview of their silent movie before Don and Cosmo split off to head to the after-party. However, before they can make it to their car, Don is mobbed by adoring fans and displays some genuinely impressive acrobatics to escape his actorial duty of signing autographs. He serendipitously lands in a passing car where we meet our real love interest, Kathy Selden. At first, Kathy is understandably terrified of the strange man who has suddenly dropped from the sky into her car. However, after Kathy learns that Don is a famous actor and not a potential molester (though these two things are certainly not mutually exclusive), she loosens up a bit. Well, until Don starts blatantly hitting on her (see?). This is where we get our first peek into who Kathy Selden is. Instead of the typical swooning over a movie star, Kathy says she’s actually not a huge fan and has maybe seen a movie or two of Don’s. This is particularly impressive as – keep in mind – Singin’ in the Rain is set in the 20s and what else is there to do besides see movies in the 20s? Kathy then reveals that she herself is an actor, a stage actor, and looks down on the silent movie stars as all their acting is, is performative and a bit ridiculous (I agree Kathy, I think you would have enjoyed my reviews of M and Ikiru). Faced with a woman who is supposedly immune to Don’s charms, he of course immediately falls in love with her. Kathy is none too impressed and splits off from Don – it seems she has a party of her own to attend.

We then head to Don’s premier after-party where Lisa continues to flirt with Don to no avail. It seems as though she can’t quite comprehend someone not being madly in love with her, and if you only saw her on the big screen, I would share that confusion. More importantly, however, the producer hosting the after-party has a neat surprise for his guests – a talkie. What’s a talkie? Well, if you couldn’t guess, it’s what we think of as movies today. That’s right, movies with sound have finally been figured out, although the party guests don’t seem too excited about it – seems like a fad to me. Another surprise appearance occurs and we see what Kathy really means when she says she’s a stage actor as she bursts through a giant cake stripper-style. Don can’t get enough of this turn of events and begins to pester her to the point that Kathy throws a cake at his face, only she misses and plants it right on Lina’s instead. She then splits from the party and Don is left standing with his dick in his hand in the driveway, watching her escape into the sunset.

The next scene happens a few weeks later on the set of Don’s new silent movie. We see him and Cosmo discussing his recent obsession with Kathy and Don asks Cosmo if he’s a good actor or just some guy who reacts weirdly in front of a camera. Cosmo tries to reassure Don and we see our first real song and dance act of the movie. Now, I knew Singin’ in the Rain was about a musical, but it was only now that I realized it also was a musical. This was my first musical movie and while it caught me off guard a bit, I thought it was pretty neat. Learning this also assuaged some of my gripes about the acting being too “stage-y” because it pretty much is a play that happens to be on the big screen rather than the stage (this is actually an interesting aspect of the movie that I’ll discuss later in more depth). Back to the actual performance though, and I gotta say – these old-school actors were not messing around. Cosmos sings and dances for about 4 minutes straight and he’s pulling acrobatics out of his ass. I mean really great physical bits, impressive stuff. But then – uh oh – breaking news, remember those talkies we saw earlier? Turns out the people love them. So much so that production is being halted on Don’s silent movie and is being converted to a talkie! The only problem? Lina.

We’ll talk more about how much Lina sucks in a bit, but first, we head back to the studio as the screen fills up with what looks like the peak of an acid trip. For about 6 minutes, a song and dance number featuring disembodied legs, acid-bright colors, and various other trippy visuals play. I actually had no idea what the fuck was going on until the camera pulls back and I realize the producer is in the middle of shooting some sort of clothing advertisement. I refuse to believe that this is actually what ads were like in the 20s, but if they were, the only explanation is that Schedule 1 narcotics were available over the counter and this adult swim-esque ad was the only way to effectively communicate with housewives who were essentially pickling themselves with drug store heroin. Anyway, turns out Kathy is in the ad and the producer likes what he sees. He begins to offer her a job on Don’s new movie when she reveals that she was the one who pied Lina’s face during the afterparty a few weeks back. Suddenly, Don comes in and says, “Hey no problem! We’ll just keep you and Lina separated and she’ll be none the wiser!” Solid plan Donnie, let’s make a movie!

The next few scenes are some more song and dance numbers and we see Don really turn up the heat with his courtship of Kathy. I mean really suave stuff. He’s serenading her and showing her the true “magic of movie making.” Even I was starting to fall for this crooning casanova, and it looks like Kathy was on the same page. Jump cut to Don and Cosmo fucking with their vocal coach for some quality humor before it’s time to shoot the talkie.

One problem though, remember how Lina’s voice sounds like personified nails on a chalkboard? Turns out she also has an undiagnosed mental deficiency as she can’t put together that you need to talk into microphones for them to pick up sound. All this combined and the early screening that the movie studio puts together is a disaster and viewers are leaving the theater vowing to never watch another Don Lockwood film again. Everything seems to be going wrong as Don, Cosmo, and Kathy are mopping around Don’s much too-large house when suddenly he’s got an idea. Hey, why not make this movie a musical? Good one Don! Now let’s sing and dance! But wait, Lina’s voice is terrible, how is she going to sing in this musical? Well, let’s just have Kathy dub over all her lines! Don is on an absolute roll.

Don then takes Kathy home and gives her a couple smooches and some real grade-A flirt. She closes the door and Don walks home in the pouring rain… can you guess what he does next? Yup, he starting singin’ in it. As a side note, I remember hearing a fact about this scene that I’m not sure is totally accurate. Apparently, the rain in this scene is actually milk. Or maybe it was that black and white movies had to use milk to depict rain? Not totally sure, but I remember the fact being both movie and milk related. Anyways, when you think about the non-zero chance that the rain is in fact milk, the scene becomes a lot grosser, don’t you think?

The gang is now in the final stretch of production and all they need is the final scene. For some reason, Don’s idea is to do a future scene where he goes to New York and tries to make it as an actor. This was really bizarre as I was like 100% sure the movie was a Victorian-era love story. I mean both Don and Lina are in powdered wigs so I have no idea what the sequitur is to him singing in a nightclub about how he absolutely needs to dance. It’s also like 20 minutes long which is insane if you ask me.

Anyway, the movie is wrapped and it’s ready to premier when Lina comes in absolutely pissed. Turns out she’s discovered that her voice is being dubbed over by Kathy and starts making all sorts of threats. Don and Cosmo basically tell her to fuck off but apparently Lina has a pretty legit lawyer and tells the head of the studio that if she doesn’t get sole credit for both her performance and Kathy’s voice, he’s gonna have to hand her the studio. Bad news bears for the gang. The movie premier happens and the audience loves it. Don is about to go on stage to make his speech, but Lina informs our trio that Kathy won’t be getting any credit and, in fact, is going to have to dub her movies for the next 5 years according to the contract she signed. Not only that, Lina is going to go out on stage and give a big speech, and Kathy is going to live-action dub that over too! The gang is distraught but ol’ Donnie has a plan. He agrees to Lina’s braindead plan and Kathy can’t believe what she’s hearing. She feels betrayed, and even though for some reason she’s going to go along with it, she tells Don that after this, she never wants to see him again. This is actually a pretty unintentionally hilarious moment because Don seems like he could not care less even though like 30 minutes ago he was literally singing and skipping in the rain for her, and 20 minutes before that he was proclaiming his love for her straight to her face (also through song).

Lina starts her acceptance speech and the audience is understandably confused that she sounds nothing like her movie counterpart until she (Kathy) starts singing. Queue Don’s plan and the curtain rises revealing Kathy singing before Cosmo steps in and makes it look like Lina’s singing a baritone. The audience starts to laugh at Lina while Kathy tries to make a break for it, sobbing as she runs. Don steps up to the mic and instructs the audience to stop that girl! He then reveals his true plan was to embarrass Lina and give Kathy all the credit, oh, he also still totally loves her. We then cut to a movie poster that features Don and Kathy, no Lina, as the happy couple kisses and leaves us with a nice and tidy ending.

I know at this point I’m 3 for 3 when I say that I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this movie as much as I did, but it’s true. At face value, a G rated musical from the 50’s sounds like its up my opposite alley, but I really had a great time watching it. In fact, of the movies I’ve watched so far on this list, Singin’ in the Rain is the only one I can see myself happily rewatching. Now, onto the ratings.

I am a little conflicted in how to judge this one as I’d almost call Singin’ in the Rain a filmed musical rather than a movie. Again, my lack of experience with old movies is hurting me, but as I’ve mentioned before, I’m going to be judging all movies on this list with the same scrutiny – and Singin’ in the Rain is no different. Therefore, the ratings on this one are going to be lower than one might expect given how much I enjoyed it. Does that make 100% perfect sense? Probably not, but too bad, that’s how I’m doing it.

I’m going to go over the story first, which was pretty insane if you think about this as a movie rather than a play. Every scene feels incredibly disjointed from the last and the transitions between are lacking if they even exist. The story is also really inconsistent. The prime example of this is Don’s idea to finish the Downton Abby-esque movie with a flash forward to a New York night club. I know the audience is only seeing two scenes from the movie within the movie, but this anarchonous jump was so jarring that I rewound three times and even turned on subtitles to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. Even if you were to take that scene out of Singin’ in the Rain, the movie still has pretty poor flow and at times felt like I was watching a clip-show that vaguely followed some over arching story rather than a continuous film. Aside from that, the story really isn’t anything special. A silent movie superstar has a tough time adjusting to movies with sound, ehh…

I mentioned this earlier in the review but the acting is the piece I am most excited to talk about. In my other reviews of old movies I’ve had a consistent issue with the acting not being realistic and instead feeling like I was watching a play. However, with Singin’ in the Rain, it pretty much is a play. Even with that, I thought the performances were significantly better than both M and Ikiru (feels a bit weird to compare these three movies but just wait until im comparing Toy Story 3 to Das Boot). There were definitely some campy, over the top theatrics, but it felt appropriate and didn’t take me out of it at all. I’m not sure how much influence the movie being in English and focusing on American culture had to do with it, but when I put Singin’ in the Rain next to the previous two movies, Singin in the Rain comes out on top. This does bring up a couple of things I think are interesting though and will be paying attention to as I continue down this list. Do I think that acting gets better as movies become more modern? Do I think that American movies have better acting because I can understand the language without subtitles and I share the same culture? The answer to the first question I think will be a yes, however the second question is more interesting to me. I’ve discussed this before but I worry that I miss important aspects of foreign films due to the fact that I am ignorant of cultural and linguistic values. This then leads to a larger question of, can you truly understand and review a movie in a language that is not your own with a culture you don’t fully understand? This is getting a little tangential to the main point of this post, but it is something I want to keep thinking about.

Now, onto the filmmaking. I really loved the filmmaking of Singin’ in the Rain. They did some really creative and cool shots that seemed far ahead of its time. While the context of a few of these scenes were wack, they looked fantastic. My favorite scene visually has to be the incredibly bizarre clothing ad I talked about earlier. When I said that is was adult swim-esque, I meant it. Even if the rest of the movie sucked ass, I would probably rewatch it just to see this scene (and a few others) again. The colors were another thing I thought they did a great job on. Generally, the colors were pretty muted with lots of browns, greys, and beiges; but when color did come into play (and it did frequently, dont get me wrong) they nailed it. The reds were so red, the blues so blue, and don’t get me started on the greens and yellows… Bright colors would pop incredibly well, and every splash of color felt very intentional. The crazy clothing ad, the scene were Don serenades Kathy, and the interesting jump to future New York were all visual highlights.

While the score certainly doesn’t reflect how much I enjoyed Singin’ in the Rain, I do emphatically recommend everyone watches it at least once. It’s a ton of fun, pretty light hearted, and would probably provide some great (or terrifying) company to an acid trip.

Story: 4/10, Acting: 7/10, Filmmaking: 8/10, Total: 6.3/10