Féerie à Mexico

Christine (Jane Powell) is the loving daughter to Jeffrey Evans (Walter Pidgeon), the American ambassador to Mexico. His friend Stanley Owen (Roddy McDowall) asks her to be his girl, but she doesn't have the time. Instead, she is taken with 50 year old concert pianist. Meanwhile her father falls in with an old love.

Teenager Jane Powell is playing with puppy crush and her daddy's love. It remains innocent and the movie stays in that zone. Roddy McDowall is also great in the that space. Jane gets to sing a bit and there is some fun like the silly little diddy Yo Te Amo Much. It is rather long at over two hours. The light fun does wear thin.

'Holiday in Mexico' may not be a great film, but it is good at what it set out to do, doesn't try to be any more than it is and knows exactly what it wants to be.

Its weak link is the thin and insipid story, the first half being almost plot less, which also suffers from draggy pacing that is especially uninteresting in the scenes between Roddy McDowell and Jane Powell that dominate too much of the second half. The overlong length, not unusual in George Sidney's 1940s films. McDowell has an annoying caricature character, and not only does he do little with it but he does grate somewhat.

There is so much to enjoy about 'Holiday in Mexico' on the other hand. Even with not much authentic Mexico in sight, being on the most part more Culver City soundstage than Mexico, it is a lovely looking film, being beautifully shot in rich colour and handsomely produced. The music is similarly great, with a mix of pleasant songs and the divine piano music of Chopin and Rachmaninov masterfully played by Jose Iturbi, in every film he appeared in his piano playing was some of the finest on film.

Scripting is not exceptional, but sweet and amusing and nowhere near as trite as the story. The bittersweet romance between Ilona Massey and Walter Pidgeon has been criticised, to me it had a lot of affecting charm. Other great things are the knockout piano choreography and the clever animated title sequence, courtesy of Hanna-Barbera, that is the most evocative of Mexico that 'Holiday in Mexico' gets.

Powell is very charming and sings beautifully, and while Massey is not as natural an actress she is still likable enough. Iturbi and Xavier Cugat add enormously to the film and Pidgeon is similarly likable. Sidney directs with competence.

All in all, lots of fun and charm though not without its flaws. 7/10 Bethany Cox

My husband and I had the pleasure of attending Jose Iturbi's concerts in San Antonio and Austin, Texas; also, my husband was fortunate to hear sister Ampara Iturbi while stationed on Trinidad during WWII, so I always rewatch these old films with great nostalgia. As an amateur pianist I did so enjoy all the music in this film. Calypso, boogie woogie, and classical...something for anyone who enjoys music. Yes, the plots of these old movies were always simplistic, but they make such good clean time-passers, particularly amid the sleaze presented to us on TV and in film today. I am so glad they have been preserved and that we have channels devoted to them. They take me back to happy times.

HOLIDAY IN Mexico is filmed in bright and lush MGM Technicolor, but looks as though the filming never strayed far from the Culver City lot. It's the trite story of a teen-ager (JANE POWELL) with a crush on a much older man (JOSE ITURBI), and having frequent heart-to-heart talks with her sophisticated father (WALTER PIDGEON).

The first half of the film at least gets away from the trite plotting with a bunch of musical numbers that are attractively staged and presented in the way MGM always managed to do. Iturbi, ILONA MASSEY and others get a chance to shine. But the second half spends too much time straightening out the problems of RODDY McDOWALL and Jane, as they deal with the central problem--Jane's crush on Iturbi which has to be cured before the final reel.

It's a chore sitting through some of the syrupy scenes between Jane and Walter Pidgeon, but at least there's a good song for the finale--Schubert's "Ave Maria" which Powell sings beautifully. Didn't Deanna Durbin's IT'S A DATE wind up with the same Schubert song?

Pidgeon shows a good flair for comedy in some of his scenes, but none of the film seems to have an air of reality about it. You watch actors go through their paces and that's it.

It's strictly fluff for fans of Powell and Pidgeon, nothing more, saved by a few choice musical numbers, and the running time is too long.

This movie is burdened mostly by poor pacing. The first half of the film is a long string of diverse musical numbers connected by a few lines of dialog. Then the director seemed to realize that some kind of plot development was necessary, so the musical numbers are few and far between in the second half of the movie, which is dedicated to getting the flimsy plot moving. Then there's the grand finale with Jane Powell delivering a beautiful rendition of "Ave Maria."

Not once did I feel like I was in Mexico City. Believe it or not, you will see more keffiyehs than sombreros in this movie! Maybe the director thought it was Holiday in Morocco. However, some of the costumes are beautiful - especially some of Jane Powell's dresses.

Walter Pidgeon, who I usually like, is only fair in his role as the US Ambassador to Mexico and an all-wise, empathetic and loving, but somewhat condescending father. Jane Powell has a beautiful voice, but her acting is erratic and bordering on manic in some of the early scenes. Jose Iturbi never was an actor, but had a film career based solely on his being an excellent pianist. Ilona Massey is, likewise, not a great actress, but she is beautiful and hot. Roddy MacDowell has such a high-pitched, soft voice, it is hard for me to ever find him very convincing as a serious love-interest, even as a teenager. At the end of the day, every minute of this film seems like it is populated not by real people, but by actors playing roles.

If you like a fairly wide range of music, then the first part of this movie will delight you. I personally wanted to come up for more air between musical numbers. The two best scenes are in the second half. The funniest scene is between Pidgeon and the parents of one of his daughter's girlfriends. It is the cleverest plot device in a plot riddled with every cinematic cliché of the era, and it is quite ironic, with Pidgeon discovering he is the object of the affections of the young daughter of one of his ambassadorial colleagues.

The penultimate scene in which Pidgeon talks frankly with Powell, his daughter, about facing up to life after you've made a fool of yourself is worth wading through the trite plot, clichés and front-loaded music. And her response, as depicted in the climactic scene is suitably uplifting.

Spreading the musical numbers more evenly throughout the film, and developing the plot in a more even manner, too, would have improved this film quite a bit. As it is, it is more like sitting through two performances - first, a short concert, followed by a short film.