26 - Singin' in the Rain

    In the late 20s, Monumental Pictures is forced to move into "talkies" due to the success of The Jazz Singer.  The problem is that the studio has a leading lady whose voice is terrible.
    I'm sure I was shown this movie when I was very young, but it wasn't anything I remembered except for a few shots.  It's good.  It's very good.  It's very entertaining, but I don't think it works as a musical.  The songs aren't especially strong.  Some of them have a nice hook, but the songs are only in place to create an opportunity to dance.  That isn't a terrible thing.  The choreography is a whole lot of fun.
    But what I found more charming was the script.  There's a slightly madcap air that permeates the story sequences.  A quick back-and-forth that was very satisfying.
    The movie does suffer from being overly long, particularly near the end.  There's an extended dance number (Gotta Dance) that doesn't add anything to the overall story, it just treads water for an extra ten minutes or so.
    There's one little element that I found eerily memorable.  There's a montage of musicals/films that happens pretty early on, and one of the elements is a man singing into a bullhorn "Should I reveal exactly how I feel…"  I found that this song is titled Should I, although I'm not finding much else about the background, besides that it was recorded by Sinatra.