La route joyeuse

What a fun film! Gene Kelly's sophisticated slapstick style permeates this movie. You can tell he was greatly influenced by Chaplin or Keaton as many of the scenes with Gene and Barbara are visual gags that are still funny today. Oh and the two young leads are great actors, refreshing for the 50s when most kids delivered their lines as if reading a book. The whole production is pure sunshine! J'adore!

This film is a comedy adventure story about an American boy and a French girl who escape their Swiss boarding school and set off for Paris, where their parents live. Gene Kelly plays the boy's father, Mike, and Barbara Laage plays Suzanne, the mother of the girl.

Directed and produced by Gene Kelly, "The Happy Road" is just that--a happy story about life on the road. There is never any real angst over the missing children. The film plays as a farce among the small towns and back roads of France. In some parts there is little dialogue, reminiscent of Mr. Hulot. This is another example of Mr. Kelly creatively branching out from the traditional format of musicals.

Thrust together by circumstance, the two parents, trade barbs about Americans and French, but learn to cooperate as their children thwart the efforts of gendarmes and generals trying to intercept their path.

Children might enjoy this film as much as, or more than, adults.

It's been a long time since I saw this movie, so I don't really remember enough details to rate it fairly. I do, however, dislike the preceding review in which the reviewer is commenting more on Kelly's life choices than on the movie itself. If you don't like movies about children running away, I have a suggestion: Don't Watch Them! That's like buying tickets to the ballet knowing you don't like ballets.

If you ready Kelly's biography, you'll find out there were several reasons he chose to live and work in France for some time. One of the chief reasons being that the golden age of musicals in Hollywood was winding down and he wasn't finding much work here in the states.

Yes, I realize I'm guilty of filling this post with commentary on Kelly's life choices as I just admonished the previous poster for doing. But I felt Kelly was unfairly pigeon-holed as being a Francophile by an under-educated reviewer with an innate dislike for this type of movie.

Gene Kelly produced, directed and starred in "The Happy Road". According to TCM when they aired it, Kelly had no work despite being under contract with MGM and so he made this movie in Europe. In hindsight, I think he should have just gone there on vacation.

The story begins with two kids sneaking away from their boarding school in Switzerland. Danny (Bobby Clark) is running away because he misses his father (Kelly) who is working in Paris. Janine (Brigitte Fossey) tags along because she thinks Danny is wonderful! Soon, the frightened parents spring into action and go in search of their kids.

There are many problems with the film--and they boil down to the script. The children and their parts worked well...the adults, on the other hand, were written badly...particularly Kelly's role. He played an overly stereotypical ugly American--who constantly was angry because the French didn't act just like Americans. Annoying, to say the least...but so was much of the interaction between the adults. The script was just not particularly good nor interesting when it came to these parents...and the nice moments with the kids wasn't enough to save this one.

The Happy Road was Gene Kelly's next to last film on his MGM contract and this was a personal project in which he not only starred in, but directed and produced as well. Probably something to pass the time of day while he was waiting for his final full blown musical Les Girls.

The film is best however when the kids are in front of the camera. The very simple story involves Kelly's son Bobby Clark who runs away from the Swiss boarding school his father has put him in to go to Paris and be with him. He also wants to prove how self reliant is. His good friend Brigette Fossey decides to join him on the odyssey and prove the same to her divorcée mother Barbara Laage.

Whatever else they do, the kids prove they're self reliant, they have the French police totally at their wits end, not to mention a bunch of NATO troops out on maneuvers, embarrassing their commanding officer Michael Redgrave no end.

Kelly is a concerned father, but he's also a poster child for the ugly American. He wasn't doing all that much for Franco-American relations with his exasperation about the French way of doing things. Laage kind of smooths out the rough edges in him by the time film ends.

With a title song sung over the opening credits by Maurice Chevalier and the film shot in France, The Happy Road will not rank as one of Gene Kelly's great films. But it's a pleasant diversion and very good for juvenile audiences.