An American in Paris
(1951)
Oh, that titular ballet. I believe it was Dr. Johnson who said of it, "None ever wished it longer."Perhaps math has little to do with art (it's a point worth debating), but look, when your film runs 113 minutes and you have a single musical number that occupies almost 17 of those minutes, that's 15 percent of your eggs in one disproportionate basket. Yes, the dance is brilliantly conceived, yes, each movement is beautiful on its own, but the whole is simple too damn long. And then, to make the ill proportion worse, the snag in the romantic plot, which sends Jerry off into the reverie that provides the excuse to dance dance dance, is blithely dismissed in 75 seconds once Jerry comes back to the real world. It's a premature ejaculation after two days of foreplay.
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