Jupiter's Darling (1955) Maybe it's fitting that this deliriously insane song 'n dance epic, set in Ancient Rome no less, plunged the final stake through the heart of the once mighty MGM musical factory.
Ridiculous in the extreme, the movie led long time studio contract stars Esther Williams and Marge and Gower Champion to bid goodbye to MGM musicals.......they didn't need to see the handwriting on the wall......since with "Jupiter's Darling", everyone, including the audience, could see the wheels flying off the bus.....
Or in this case, the chariot.
We kid you not, somebody at MGM thought they could musicalize Hannibal and his army of elephants marching to conquer Rome. And from the snarky tagline that opens the film, it sounds like a Marx Brothers spoof is what they may have had in mind here.......
Except they forgot to tell the actors, most of whom dutifully trod through the film as if they're doing a remake of "Quo Vadis"......the results come much closer to the mock-serious lunacy of the John-Wayne-as-Genghis Khan disaster "The Conqueror".....(but with the extra added bonus of painful, rotten songs!)
Booming baritone Howard Keel snarls and snaps as Hannibal, regularly abusing the stunning, amazonian Roman babe (Williams) he's besotted with. Esther only has time for one big dip-in-the-pool underwater dance number, but it's a phantasmagoric corker......with colored bubbles, swimming angelic cherubs, and ripped guys as statues come to life. (And they all look like they're holding their breath for an ungodly amount of time......
But wait, there's more showstoppers among the waxed floors and crumbling columns of the Eternal city. The Champions get to do not one, but two of their strenuous, acrobatic dance numbers.....one them along side a prancing baby elephant. No, wait a sec, come to think of it, Marge 'n Gower did most of the prancing.......
The supreme set piece for us was an incredible, extended underwater action sequence that has Williams relentlessly pursued by three of Hannibal's most implacable soldiers. It wouldn't look out of place in the Bond film "Thunderball" as America's glub-glub sweetheart swims for her life through caves, lagoons and assorted reefs.......and none of 'em rely on those little five minute breathers that Q gave Sean Connery.......
It's pure madness, really.....an MGM musical that features Romans pouring boiling oil on shrieking men and elephants and then finishes up with Keel, Williams and the Champions singing happily as a parade of brightly painted multi-colored elephants stomps by.....
And you don't even need to take mind-altering drugs to believe what you're seeing.......yes indeed, the elephants glow as pretty as the Horse Of A Different Color in "The Wizard Of Oz".
For this one-of-a-kind nutball effort, our rating might seem as crazy as the movie itself, but we don't care. A supreme guilty pleasure we watched with jaw dropped and plenty of head-shaking smiles.
3 stars (***) But try to use earplugs when the songs start.....they're beyond awful.
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