MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (1944) **1/2 This is the sort of film that shouldn't have aged well: sappy and sentimental pre-pop pop musical ode to an America that never was, and had quite a bit wrong with it anyway. But what happens is that Georgie Stoll comes up with some pretty good songs, Judy Garland wails them with soul befitting Louis Armstrong or Muddy Waters, and Vincente Minnelli is the greatest of the sentimentalist doctrinaire directors. So it's catchy, and warm, and a lot of fun. Judy is always great (it's easy to see why Vincente had to marry her), but Margaret O'Brien rules with her wholesome and uplifting morbidity. Work has divided Leon Ames from his family, it's more like two families that don't know each other well. But then there are the natural responses to the artificial polarization, I think that we need to get back closer to those natural responses. Not that they're a bunch out of Rousseau or anything, I've never seen girls have to plot so hard just to get kissed!
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