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The movie tells a simple, light-hearted love story between Leonora Cambaretti (Esther Williams), the leading swimmer in a water ballet show, and Ferdi Farro (Jimmy Durante), a singer who just returned from World War II. The plot is rather straight, without serious complications, harmless, sometimes naive, insubstantial. But within its limited scope it is well done and enjoyable.

As this is a musical movie, there is singing, dancing, and -- most remarkable -- the water ballet. The different numbers include some charming scenes. But you cannot compare the dancing with the wonderful performances that are known, for example, from Fred Astaire movies. Also the singing numbers do not reach the quality that is present, for instance, in "My Dream Is Yours" (with Doris Day as a singer), a movie that was produced at about the same time with a similar, though slightly more ambitious entertainment scope.

"Django" counts as a classic of Italian western cinema and influenced many other movies of the time. When I went to school, everybody knew the name "Django", even if he had not seen the film, and it stood for a person who was hard and manly up to ridiculousness.

If I watch the movie today, I find this ridiculousness again in Django's completely exaggerated, unrealistic capabilities that help him to defeat his enemies. The coffin that he drags behind himself through the mud is certainly an original gag, a suitable requisite for an anti-hero in a movie that wants to make fun of the classic pathetic western style and drag it (literally!) through the mud.

However, what else is left? The classic American western is broken down, but nothing is substituted for it. The movie has almost no plot, was filmed at a cheap-looking set and poorly directed. There is nothing what one could seriously call an "action scene", only incredibly stupid "bang! bang!" shooting. The spectacle might count as a form of modern Roman circus, with whores wrestling in the mud, people being killed in vast numbers as if it were nothing, a celebration of sadism and violence. And that is the point were it goes beyond an (already otherwise bad enough) joke. I do not want producers to keep violence away from cinema - some of my favorite movies show violence in abundance. But these movies do not show violence in the form of shallow entertainment, and I do not watch these films just to see the violence. "Django" shows extreme violence for the sake of violence only. This alone would make it unbearable, if it were not already a poorly produced movie.

With Sergio Leone's excellently directed masterpiece "C'era una volta il West" ("Once Upon a Time in the West") the Italian western genre created a milestone for cinema. But if "Django" is a milestone, it is a milestone for trash, and the genre is obviously also full of that.

Connie Doyle (played by Ricki Lake) is abandoned on the streets by her former lover as she tells him that she is pregnant and does not want an abortion. Months later, in an advanced stage of her pregnancy and on the way to a shelter for the homeless, she enters the wrong train and gets involved into a chain of coincidences that finally leads to the end that, when the train crashes in an accident, she is mistaken for Mrs. Patricia Winterbourne, another pregnant woman, who loses her life under the shattered heap of steel. Because Hugh Winterbourne had married Patricia only a short time ago in distant Europe, never sent a photograph and is himself among the death victims, the Winterbourne family accepts the mistaken identity, at least at the beginning. Thus, when Connie wakes up at the hospital, she finds herself in a different world, as the member of a wealthy family and with a little son who is enthusiastically welcomed by his supposed grandmother.

The main part of the plot that follows this exposition is what should be romantic comedy, from the time on when Connie meets Hugh Winterbourne's brother Bill. However the movie is neither able to create any romantic atmosphere nor does it come up with a single scene that I could find really comic. Of course there are situations that are quite absurd, but they did not make me laugh or even smile, because they were too directly and sometimes crudely contrived.

All in all, the movie is not very original. It makes use of a large number of plot elements that we have seen fitting together much better in hundreds of comedies before. And what is absolutely fatal for a romantic comedy is that the central relationship does not work. We see two people come together because it is written in the script, not because they are drawn together by affection.

The movie is obviously intended as a kind of Cinderella story for female movie viewers. At least this explains why Bill's part is played by a good-looking Brendan Fraser, while for Connie's part an actress with a more average look and figure was chosen. But it is hard for me to believe that the female perspective would turn this movie into anything worth mentioning, if it were not simply because Brendan Fraser appears on the screen.

The only genuine reason for watching the movie could be the fact that Shirley MacLaine plays Grace Winterbourne, Connie's supposed mother in law. She is great as ever and therefore appears misplaced in a weak movie among actors who deliver only second-rate performances.