Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

We find Howard Keel and his daughter, Ann Blythe, in some whimsical Arabian fairyland. Keel is a near beggar who sells poems for a living. Some of the dialog is pretty witty. The whole screen play is full of keen lines. The plot is about mistaken identities and barely avoided executions and other nonsense, and Keel winds up terribly rich and accompanied by his enemy's lusty widow. Ann Blythe winds up married to Vic Damone, the all powerful Caliph.It's colorful, fast, tuneful, and often amusing. I don't know why it doesn't show up more often among the lists of favorite MGM musicals or something. Maybe what it needs is a little injection of Terpsichoreate from time to time. There is some uninspired ensemble dancing and that's it. It's easy to imagine one of the great dancers in MGM's stable in a supporting role: not Gene Kelly, of course, but Tommy Rall or Jacques D'Amboise. Either of them could have pepped up the choreography too, which is repetitious and a little bizarre.Keel does okay in the role of the quick-witted and fast-talking pawn of fate who is thrown from one state to another. His baritone is user-friendly and the lyrics are unusually sophisticated for what is basically a musical comedy. The evil Wazir is about to have Keel's hand chopped off for theft and Keel sings a love song to his hand, something along the lines of "how can I make a fist there, when there's nothing but the hint of a wrist there?" Hint of a wrist there? The lyrics approach those of Cole Porter and Noel Coward.You can't fault Ann Blythe's supreme soprano either. She reaches notes that would shatter glass for a mile around. Only Vic Damone sounds like he belongs on a period juke box.At least two or three of the songs became hits on that juke box, "Stranger in Paradise" was one. It's difficult for a viewer to understand just how complicated it is to arrange a musical that has so many melodies and choral passages in it. I was in a college production of "Kismet" and found the numbers tuneful and intricate, full of counterpoint and unexpected melodic intrusions. I was only a beggar but the part was demanding. Did you ever try wrapping a turban around your head? No. I thought as much. It was a small role but as a beggar I was peerless, convincing -- nonpareil. A great beggar. I still am.Maybe another reason why "Kismet" isn't so popular is that it draws its tunes from the works of Alexander Borodin. He was a good composer, considering that he was a chemist or something. But he wrote music that could be turned into POP SONGS. You can imagine how that made the cognoscente feel about Borodin. Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett on that damned juke box again, and, who knows, Lefty Frizell. Ask the music critic for the New York Times what he thinks of Borodin -- or Tchaikovsky ("Tonight We Love") or Rachmaninoff ("Full Moon and Empty Arms") and see what answer you get.Snobs, all of them. And I'll bet they never pay any attention to the colorful beggars either, no matter how magnificent the beggars' performances.

Apparently some of the disgust a handful of readers have been feeling about this movie is due to the fact that they have the old VHS version. The new DVD version restores the original theatrical ratio, and the result is simply stunning: the movie is much clearer that it was in the full screen form, and restores the more lavish numbers to their full glory - there are more extras in there than anyone who has seen the original VHS version realizes; it's not a very small cast at all! True, the original finale is replaced by Howard Keel's version of "The Sands Of Time," the song that opened and closed the original Broadway musical, but that hardly matters. I have seen scenes from the VHS version on GOOGLE Video, and they are faded and grainy, while the DVD version is bright and colorful - you MUST watch it.

Back in the 70's, Eartha Kitt, Melba Moore and a young Obba Babatunde among others, starred on Broadway, in a lavish all black adaptation of Kismet. It was called Timbuktu. I enjoyed it immensely. Unfortunately, it seems as though there is no film record of this glorious adaptation. So I will have to carry it's memory around in my heart.It wasn't until the early 80's that I managed to catch Kismet on late night TV. Despite the fact that I saw them in reverse order, Kismet did come first. And although my perception of it's charms are colored by my prior exposure to Timbuktu, I must say that Howard Keel and his fellow cast members deliver outstanding performances.I highly recommend it.

This is a wonderful film version of the stage musical. Vincent Minnelli does a great job keeping the film entertaining and sexy. Kismet has one of Howard Keel's best performances in singing and acting. Dolores Gray is stunning! Ann Blythe is beautiful. Vic Damone is the weak actor in the film. It is not his fault, his vocal quality is not legit enough for "Stranger in Paradise".Sebastian Cabot, Mr. French from Family Affair fame, plays the Wazir with a sense of buffoonery which is perfect. The music is based on the themes of Borodin so you can't go wrong. The dancers are awesome and the choreography is dead on perfect. An MGM classic musical still waiting a release on DVD.