Saw Top Hat, a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers film about not very much. Fred's character runs into Ginger's during a dancing-related incident, he falls in love with her, she mistakes him for another man who is married, servants are involved, the usual. The film is essentially a vehicle for the dancing of which there is plenty and all good-quality. I especially liked one of the numbers where ginger wears a long feathered dress and does everal whirling jumps in it. Beautiful. There's also a show-stopping finale so iconic that The Simpsons parodied it. 50 men and woman on a white Venetian canal set, dancing over water that had been dyed black, it's something to see.
Apart from the dancing though, the plot of the film is the goofy boilerplate of mistaken identities and comical romance. This is not to say it's inept or badly done, mind you. There's some great performances by supporting characters and the writing is not going anywhere new, but it gets us to those familiar places with some style. It's apparently one of the films that rescued the struggling RKO pictures and is therefore kind of safe. There's some sweet dancing but the risks stop there. Not a bad little film.
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