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Maybe this film was never going to pick up an Oscar, but for plain entertainment value it's pretty hard to beat. You've got to remember that this film is over fifty years old and, although the quality of the video is very good, they did things a little differently back then. What was funny or topical at that time might well go over our heads today. The plot isn't gripping, but it will keep you amused, and the film really buzzes in places. Astaire dances to his usual excellent standard, with some unusual and snappy routines, but for the first time, he really has to compete for the stage with his partner. Miss Hutton not only keeps up with Astaire, she actually manages to upstage the 'Master' in the dance routines. You'll have to watch the film four or five times before you start to look at Astaire when they dance together. Betty Hutton is totally magnetic; you can't stop watching her for a moment. Although she may not have quite the technical abilities of some of Astaire's previous partners, she more than makes up for that with her enthusiasm and dynamic personality. It's like tossing a grenade into a vat of champagne - an explosion of sparkle and fizz. And make no mistake about it...That gal can dance! Well worth seeing.

Let's Dance finds Fred Astaire teamed with Betty Hutton professionally in an act. And the plot of the story revolves around Astaire trying to make it a romantic partnership as well.

In fact he announces to the audience at a USO show during World War II that he'd like to marry his partner. Small problem though Hutton tells Astaire in the dressing room. She's already slightly married some months earlier in a whirlwind romance. The act gets broken up as well.

Flash forward to five years later. Hutton is a war widow raising her young son Gregory Moffett in some affluent Boston surroundings presided over by her husband's mother Lucile Watson. Watson is a wealthy WASP dowager who's just about gotten used to the fact that her son married an entertainer, but she insists that her grand kid be raised as a proper Bostonian. Not for Betty who's bored stiff with polite society. She takes off with Moffett.

In New York she hooks up again with Fred, but it's romantic rocky road with a couple of detours for Fred it's Ruth Warrick and for Betty, Sheppard Strudwick.

I don't think that there was any surprise that there was no demand for the return of the team of Astaire and Hutton. They perform their numbers well although I agree with other reviewers that the film is tilted for Betty from the gitgo. The fact that this was her home studio of Paramount no doubt helped there. I do agree that composer Frank Loesser having dealt with Betty before wrote for her. He had already given her I Wish I Didn't Love You So from The Perils of Pauline. Loesser himself was getting his songwriting career into high gear. He had just had a big Broadway smash in Where's Charley and would the following year have his biggest hit of all with Guys and Dolls.

Nothing here was nominated for an Academy Award. Can't Stop Talking About Him is Betty's best number, definitely in her style. Fred looks a little silly trying to keep up with her. He's shown to best advantage in the piano dance, dancing on a Steinway and in a hoedown western style dance number with Betty in Them Dudes Were Doing Our Dance.

Some interesting casting here. Two guys who usually were villains in films play good guys with Barton MacLane as the gruff, but kindly club owner where Astaire and Hutton are playing and George Zucco as the judge before whom the custody battle is fought. Lucile Watson is her usual imperious self and has a crack legal team at her disposal with Roland Young and Melville Cooper.

Let's Dance was a good film for Betty Hutton. It didn't do too much for Fred Astaire however.

I grew up on this movie, so I may be a little biased, but... The characters are genuine and their needs believable. The heroine is driven from the home of her son's overbearing grandmother and into the nightclub scene - which is wholesome and romantic because it's the fifties. There, she earns her keep and finds the most loyal friends a girl could ever want. In her flirty roles of cigarette girl and singer, she has a run-in with the love of her life and the perfect, singer-dancer dad for her little boy. By the end, if you are not too cynical, you will be rooting for the lovers to hop onto the 'Love Boat' and ride downstream together.

The movie only gives us about five musical numbers, but they are each wonderful. "Them Dudes Are Stealing Our Dance" has to rank in the top ten of best musical numbers for both of them. There really isn't any romantic chemistry between Astaire and Hutton. She was 30 years old and Astaire was 51. I suspect the age difference was the problem, he really was old enough to be her father. The plot is a little too simplistic and there aren't many surprises. Betty is more interested in keeping her child from the hands of a vindictive mother-in-law than in her romance with stock broker-entertainer Astaire. What is great in the film is Betty Hutton's performance. She is hilarious, energetic and in super form dancing and singing. She did it between "Annie Get Your Gun" and "The Greatest Show on Earth". If you liked her in those movies, you'll like her here. The film is light and fluffy and entertaining as hell.

Let's Dance is a Betty Hutton movie. Fred Astaire may have equal billing, but Hutton dominates the picture. Her mixture of tomboy boisterousness and unrelenting brashness makes the casual and easy-going Astaire seem as relevant as Percy Kilbride trying to catch up with Marjorie Main. During the Forties, audiences loved Betty Hutton. She was hugely insecure, which probably accounted for her need to give 150 per cent, when 90 per cent would have served her better.

With Let's Dance, It's almost startling to see how Fred Astaire has difficulty establishing his presence against Hutton's unremitting energy. It doesn't help that the songs, written by Frank Loesser, are tailored more to Hutton's strengths than they are to Astaire's. None of the songs are noteworthy, and they often blend heavy rhythmic repetition, loudness and jitterbug style with ample opportunity for Hutton to mug and exaggerate. Even the one romantic song, "Why Fight the Feeling," is given to Hutton first to deliver as a comic vamp. Loesser had written for Hutton before and he knew her strengths.

The story is about Kitty McNeil (Betty Hutton), an entertainer for the troops, who marries a rich, socialite Army pilot in London in 1945. He dies shortly after, shot down, but not before Leaving Kitty with child. Fast forward five years later when Kitty and her son are living with the boy's very rich great grandmother. The woman, snobbish and high in society, believes Kitty is unsuitable as a mother to the boy. But Kitty escapes the mansion with her son and, after a few tribulations, gets a job as a cigarette girl in a nightclub. But guess what? Her partner during the war years had been Don Elwood (Fred Astaire). They had sort of loved each other. They met by accident in a cheap diner after Kitty had kidnapped her son. It was Don who helped her get the job in the nightclub where Don did some dancing while he tried to establish himself as a financial whiz. The story goes on and on. For Kitty, she must fight off her son's great grandmother and the woman's lawyers. She has Don to help her. Of course, all the people in the nightclub, from the owner to the cooks to the dancers, fall for the little boy and try to help Kitty, too. All the while she and Don are edgily moving closer...a kind of boy and girl love each other, boy loses girl, then repeat three times. Finally, boy gets girl along with a five-year-old stepson.

But this is an Astaire movie, sort of, so what of the singing and dancing? "I Can't Stop Talking About Him" is the opening number, sung and danced before the troops in 1945 by Kitty and Don. Kitty is in a bright pink dress, Don in drab Army brown. Your eyes tend to focus on Hutton and the dress. Hutton sings the song and she and Astaire dance. It's all in the Hutton style, loud. Astaire dances a rehearsal number with two pianos, clambering over and under them and playing some piano himself. "Jack and the Beanstalk" is a hip version of the old fairy tale which Astaire sings to Kitty's little boy. It's not that bad, and Astaire gets to make a long bean stalk out of a newspaper while singing it, but it's little more than specialty material. "Oh, Them Dudes" is a raucous cowboy song and dance with Hutton and Astaire gussied up like old-time mustachioed cowboys. Astaire did this kind of thing better with Judy Garland in Easter Parade's "Couple of Swells" and would do it better again with Jane Powell in Royal Wedding's "How Could You Believe Me...." "Why Fight the Feeling," Astaire has said, was a song he liked a lot. In Let's Dance, it just doesn't get a chance to establish itself. The movie's finale, "Tunnel of Love," is another loud production number tailored much more to Hutton than Astaire. They sing and they dance, but Hutton is mugging all the way.

Let's Dance features some pleasant comic turns by Roland Young and Melville Cooper, as well as solid character actors such as Ruth Warrick, Shepperd Strudwick, Barton MacLane and George Zucco.