Dvd Review: 'white Christmas’

The last time I saw this movie musical, it was on television, and I was at an age where I couldn’t tell the difference between the real Santa Claus and my father in a Santa Claus suit. [...] the good news: [...] the first 67 minutes are reasonably pleasing, in an old-fashioned, 1954 sort of way, despite a decidedly weak score. Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye play war buddies who become major showbiz players, writer-performers, sort of like Rodgers and Hammerstein if they starred in their own shows. Vera-Ellen and Rosemary Clooney are a sister act, and the two men accompany them to a hotel in Vermont where the women are performing over the holidays. Sixty-seven minutes in, I looked up and noticed the movie had 53 minutes left to go, even though every plot element had been resolved. [...] there’s a whole thing involving former soldiers coming to visit their former general (Dean Jagger), in a sequence that makes you think the writers, the performers and director Michael Curtiz might have gotten hold of one of those early batches of LSD. What’s weirdest about all this, and what I couldn’t see as a child — maybe the adults around me couldn’t see it, either — is that not one of the actors believes at all in the proceedings, with the exception of the wonderful Danny Kaye, whose spirit was unstoppable.