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I am, admittedly, a Ginger Rogers and James Stewart fan, and though there seems good chemistry between them in this film, I found the film rather tedious and frustrating to watch. The story line is good but some elements drag on too long. I will say that this is the only film I've seen James Stewart in where I feel like he really needs a kick in the pants! His character is so much of a milquetoast as to be almost beyond belief, although he finally does assert himself much later in the picture.

Ginger is lovely and charming, and this is a good role for her. Beulah Bondi is a joy, and if you've never seen her dance, you're in for a surprise! I gave this film seven stars, mostly because of Ginger and Beulah, as they are truly the bright spots of this otherwise only-worthy-of-four-stars movie.

Like another person who commented, I feel this film leaves too many unanswered questions as to what happened in the years between 1947 and 1958. It was fun to see a few of the original characters (Fay Holden, as Mrs. Hardy, had aged very well!), but the original flavor of the Hardy series was completely lost. The film does come to a satisfying conclusion, however.

One comment regarding archive footage used in the film: I've seen it said repeatedly that the footage of Mickey and Judy was from "Love Finds Andy Hardy", when actually the footage was taken from "Babes in Arms" and adapted with "dubbed-over" names. The footage seems to indicate that Andy and Betsy Booth were more romantically involved than they were in the earlier Hardy films. However, Mickey and Judy are always a treat to watch, whatever the film clip.

Although this film provides some closure, it seems it was intended to begin a new generation of Andy Hardy films; thankfully, film makers left well enough alone after this entry.

Many people seem to genuinely love "The Band Wagon", and it regularly receives top recommendations from reviewers and raters, but I just don't like this movie. Some of Fred Astaire's numbers are top notch, such as "Shine on My Shoes" and Fred and Cyd's number "Dancing in the Dark", and by themselves deserve a top rating. However, the plot is irritating, particularly the characters laboriously plodding through trying to bring to fruition producer Jeffrey Cordova's (Jack Buchanan) view of what the next great stage musical show should be like. Also, Fred and Cyd seem much too far apart in age to be a plausible romantic couple. Most irritating is that the musical numbers seem to be a hodge-podge which have nothing to do with each other. It's all too disjointed to be enjoyable.

I will say this is not entirely the fault of Betty Comden and Adolph Green's writing--they were, at times, given a group of unrelated songs by MGM and requested to write a movie script that would encompass them. This film was also loosely based on their own professional relationship as a script-writing team, although they were not married, as the writers, the Martons, are in the film.

If you haven't seen this movie, it IS worth watching for some of the musical numbers, and when I've seen it, I try to concentrate on those. But try as I might, I never seem to be able to warm up to this film.