Meet Me in St. Louis

Ill-conceived pilot for a proposed TV series based on the classic movie musical. Story deals with a large family in 1904 St. Louis. It mostly focuses on teenage Esther (Shelley Fabares) and her boring love life. A ridiculously young Michael Blodgett plays her main attraction and Celeste Holm plays her ridiculously understanding mother. It's in color and looks good but has a terrible script with horrible "jokes". Even worse is the unbearable laugh track that pops up now and then. The only reason to see this is Fabares, Holm and Blodgett who are all great. That aside there's nothing here.

The DVD release of the two-disk edition of "Meet Me In St. Louis" is an exceptional package--a case where the extras actually are amazingly good. Generally, when DVDs say they have special features, they are lame and of little value to anyone. BUT, in this package they give you a little bit of everything. The only DVD extras I can recall being better are those with "The Jazz Singer"!

I think that my score of 3 is actually a bit generous for this DVD extra. It's a failed pilot episode for a show based on the movie. Part of the problem is that the show was made more than 20 years later and you can't use the original cast that we've all grown to love and expect. But the biggest problem is that the show was just bad--badly written, not being true to the time period (circa 1904--though the guys in the show sporting 1960s hair), characters who seemed NOTHING like the originals and having a laugh track from hell!! At every turn, the laughter just poured onto the screen--even when the characters weren't doing anything remotely funny--nor was it even intended to be funny! It was annoying an inappropriate--and made the show seem even less like the movie--which was a work of art. This pilot was anything but a work of art! It was an artless mess that was "Meet Me In St. Louis" in name only.

Poorly written and poorly executed, this was a concept doomed from the start.

It was cute, as such a novelty item could expect to be. the canned laughter at times was a bit off set... confusing to be quite precise to the point. Celeste Holm was very apt as the mother of the cast, as always a very soft spoken and motherly voice is hers. The casting all around was a novelty item in itself. As a consumer it would sit on the shelf next to the complete set of The Flinstones or Petticoat Junction. The pilot is featured on the two disk set of the 1944 film version starring judy garland and margaret o'brian. It's a nice addition to that feature, but as i repeat, at the risk of sounding redundant, it is simpley a novelty piece. no more.