Neptune's Daughter (1949)

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

The movie features a marvelous cast, each doing his or her specialty. But I especially like the unheralded Betty Garret as the ditzy sister who manages to steal several scenes. Williams has a few abbreviated swim scenes, but does more acting than paddling. Then too, making her a swimsuit designer gives us guys an eyeful of the modeling scenes. Frankly, though, I was disappointed with the big aqua number, which has legions of girls diving into the pool but little more. It's far from any kind of ballet that Williams is so good at. Of course, Skelton is made for movies like this where his slapstick comedy can blend into the overall shenanigans. However, a couple of his skits (mounting the horse & piling it on muscle- man Mazurki) went past their peak of hilarity. Good to see voice wizard Mel Blanc get a movie break after so many years of funny dialects on radio, TV, and cartoons. All in all, the movie's an entertaining and certainly colorful 90-minutes, but unfortunately not Williams' best.

She looked beautiful and youthful with her hair down, which happened infrequently in her movies, in an era when women wanted to look mature and sophisticated not young. My feeling about Baby, It's Cold Outside is it was the comedic use of obviously phony arguments to underline the flirtatious ploy. They also didn't have family or neighbors to care if they stayed. (This certainly wasn't the first or last time a song was shoehorned into a movie, such as Easter Parade being sung in a rural setting in Holiday Inn when it is about NYC, or Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but this is undeniably one of the odder examples of that.) It reminded me,though, that my favorite Esther Williams scenes were set in winter, on Mackinac Island in This Time for Keeps.I enjoyed Red Skelton (who would have done well to learn Spanish!) and Betty Garrett. My eyes glazed over from disinterest when they weren't on. I loved some of Esther's clothes, though, especially the swimsuit and wrap in the teaching scene with Skelton. (Where we saw one of the strangest ways to knock a fellow out.) It seemed to me the Keenan Wynn character and the Skelton and Garrett characters didn't belong in the same movie. Wynn seemed like he would have fit a drama rather than a light comedy, such as Skelton and Garrett showing how NOT to mount a horse. (The stunt work in this movie deserves praise.) Wynn's character, narration, and background music struck me as being more appropriate for something dark, maybe a crime of passion. Williams and Montalban's characters were somewhere down the middle. The poor fellow really did "get the business" as was cruelly pointed out.Swimming scenes always make me wonder how many times everyone had to dry off and reshoot.

Lame musical comedy starring Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalbahn. Williams plays a bathing suit designer who wants to protect her sister, Betty Garrett, from Montalbahn, a polo star and Lothario whom Garrett has fallen for. Really, though, Garrett has fallen for Red Skelton, who pretends to be Montalbahn. While Williams thinks she's keeping Montalbahn occupied, the two, as you expect, fall in love. Williams is a pretty boring actress, famously only "something" when she's wet, and she's kept out of the water for 95% of the movie, and they even cut away from what promises to be an epic water ballet in the final moments. The only amusing moments come between Skelton and Garrett, though their antics never rise above slightly amusing. They have good chemistry, though. It's too bad their studio didn't recognize it at the time, because they should have been paired again. There are two bits of interest in the film: first, it won the Oscar for best song, Frank Loesser's "Baby, It's Cold Outside". Now there's a trivia question! The song doesn't even make sense in the movie. As far as I could tell, the movie takes place in California. Even if I'm incorrect on that, it certainly was never cold in the movie, and why would someone even write a song about the cold and snowstorms for an Esther Williams movie? Weird. It's a great song, of course, and the best part of the film. Both couples sing it in full back to back, with Garrett and Skelton reversing the roles the second time around. The second thing, there's this one character in the movie named Pancho, who works for the polo team or something. When he began to talk, I was thinking, "Wow, what a stereotypical accent. Sounds just like Speedy Gonzales." Then, "Wow, really a lot like Speedy Gonzales. Wait a second… that actor looks like…" Yes, it was! Mel Blanc, playing a guy who sounds just like Speedy Gonzales. I didn't know Mel Blanc did anything live action.

Hey, this is a topper. One of the best of WILLIAMS swim films, mainly because it has the great Betty Garrett. Her scenes are wonderful, and she and Red Skelton are wonderful together. The Red and Betty seduction scene where he's trying to act like a Spaniard is sensational and wait until he tastes Garretts appetizer. Sheer genius. The new DVD copy is terrific, sharp and clear. Yes, its MGM's clean-cut studio bound movie, but it's what MGM did best. Haven't seen the other WILLIAMS movies in the collection yet, but am looking forward. Also looking forward to another volume and hope that her best, yet under-rated SKIRTS AHOY is included. See this for pure fun.