Marge and Gower Champion play a song-and-dance couple -- admittedly not much of a stretch -- in this piece that Mr. Champion directed for Hal Roach's Screen Director's Playhouse.
The dance numbers are very good, but they and the direction are all of a piece: dances, songs, orchestration, arguing, they are all matters of perfect timing and clockwork precision that makes it look fake. It's remarkably like all of his work, from the choreography of his and his wife's dance numbers to his big Broadway hits in the 1970s -- choreographed, not directed. I walk away from each effort with the sense that it's all very good, but that it will always be the same -- and never anything that I didn't see the first time.
Don't get me wrong: there is something charming about the precision of Champion's work. But they don't call me to take a second look.
The dance numbers are very good, but they and the direction are all of a piece: dances, songs, orchestration, arguing, they are all matters of perfect timing and clockwork precision that makes it look fake. It's remarkably like all of his work, from the choreography of his and his wife's dance numbers to his big Broadway hits in the 1970s -- choreographed, not directed. I walk away from each effort with the sense that it's all very good, but that it will always be the same -- and never anything that I didn't see the first time.
Don't get me wrong: there is something charming about the precision of Champion's work. But they don't call me to take a second look.