Gee! Ain’t that somethin’? She’s the kinda girl I’ve always dreamed about. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be married to a girl who played baseball?
Take Me Out to the Ball Game is the second and final musical of these 30 baseball films.
I love baseball. I love Gene Kelly. Even with that going for it, I still disliked this one.
Now understand, I didn’t dislike it because I didn’t know what I was getting into watching a Kelly-Sinatra musical. I enjoy plenty of 40s and 50s musicals. I’m saying that judging the film by the standards of this particular genre, I still think this one isn’t any good.
I expected the baseball to be silly. This is Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra pretending to be ballplayers, I didn’t expect it to look like they’re the real deal. If they’d been able to competently swing a bat, that would have been a bonus. Granted, they didn’t even get the basic rules of the game right, but still, the poor quality of the baseball element and my enjoyment of the film were in no way mutually exclusive.
The problem was that the rest of the movie wasn’t any good, either.
There was no arc to any of the plotlines, characters basically just teleported from one emotional state to the next. The romance makes even less sense than it does in most musicals from the 40s — and that’s really saying something, because that’s about the lowest bar there is. And the songs are lackluster at best.
There’s also a plotline in which a wealthy, corrupt gambler conspires to keep Kelly’s character from helping his team win the pennant. This should have been the central throughline in the film for a number of narrative reasons. Instead, it’s jammed into the final 25 minutes of the movie. That sort of arc is either the heart of the plot, or it’s not in the film. It shouldn’t have been randomly tacked on in the third act.
We don’t even get a trademark Gene Kelly surrealist dance segment. I know it was the late 40s and Kelly still hadn’t reached the height of his powers, but still. They even had one in On the Town, so I don’t think it’s too much to ask for them to throw us a bone. It wouldn’t have saved the movie, but at least it might have given us something worthwhile to watch for 7-12 minutes.
When I’m finished with these baseball movies, I’m going to need to watch An American in Paris or Singin’ in the Rain to get this taste out of my mouth.
Related fun fact: I’m going to be honest, and say I actually fucking hate the song ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game.’
Up Next: Nick Nolte plays a directionless, alcoholic high school umpire in Off the Black. It’s a 90’s indie-drama, not like, a script that was originally meant to be Bad Umpire starring Billy Bob Thornton.
