Annie Get Your Gun (1950)

There's no business like show business...
As fans of most of the musicals, Annie Get Your Gun, satisfies that toe tapping desire. Betty Hutton and Howard Keel have a great sound. The "love conquers all" theme reminds one to realize it's not always about winning.

Betty Hutton is a hoot!
This is one fun musical. Sure Betty Hutton plays it a little over the top, but she is still a hoot. The bonus features show some footage shot with Judy Garland before she ditched the project. It's tough to say who played Annie best as the two actresses had such different personalities and acting styles. For me a truly superior musical must have songs that I remember and hum for days afterwards. The songs in this film fit the bill and Hutton and Keel do them justice. My favorites are "You Can't Get a Man with a Gun", "There's No Business Like Show Business" and "Anything you can do I can do better." You'll not regret adding this film to collection of great musicals and you'll be singing along for days afterwards!

A Big Bulls-Eye for Berlin and Betty
A thinly plotted, often cartoonish, back-lot MGM musical (with lavish production values), it's common to give this movie a pass primarily on the basis of its bright, powerful collection of Irving Berlin songs. But watching it after many years, I find it hard to take my attention away from Betty Hutton's performance, which rivals that of Doris Day in "Calamity Jane."

Hutton defies the stereotypical glamorous Hollywood movie queen even more than Doris, slight of build with pugnacious, squeezed and terrier-like facial features, but nevertheless radiating screen presence that must have threatened to overwhelm even the largest Rialto screens. She goes from ornery to dumb to feisty to romantic, yet never relinquishes an iota of her essentially androgynous, winning and winsome character. Whether admiring her or wanting to hug her, she's got you hooked all the way. In fact, I was more than a little surprised to discover that it's not the male lead but Annie who introduces the seductively soft and inviting "They Say That Falling In Love Is Wonderful." When Howard Keel eventually joins her midway in the song, it's as though a bellowing bull has mistaken an intimate chamber room for the pasture.

No doubt some present-day viewers will be distracted by the resolution of the plot, which owes a generous royalty to Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew." But as with Shakespeare's "tamed" Bianca, the audience is fully in on the deception at the final shooting match. When it comes to who's the real sharp-shooter, the true minister of munitions, the expert in the use of fire arms, there can't be a shred of doubt in the viewer's mind. Had the movie gone as planned, with Judy Garland playing Annie (she became indisposed by illness), the whole business could easily have become cloying and sidetracked. With the irrepressible and irresistible Hutton, the big ship stays on course, moving briskly on its way to a dead-center bulls-eye.

Finally, kudos to MGM or Warner Home Video for the sharp shine of the print quality of this edition. It puts the equally compelling if not better "Calamity Jane" to shame, even though the latter film came three years after "Annie."