Best movie of this year hands down!

I love this movie so much

An Exercise In Nonsense

Admirable film.

Esther Williams is a swimmer/water skier in this fun-filled Technicolor romp of hers. Van Johnson is her boss who puts on the aquatic shows. She complains about being overworked and under-appreciated, but all the while she has secretly loved Van. Apparently, Van has too (her), because his jealousy starts to show when rival Tony Martin shows up with his smooth voice. But she is currently going with John Bromfield, a swimming partner in the shows. (I had never heard of John Bromfield before this film.) This is one of the better movie vehicles for Ms. Esther. This is funny and entertaining and has some great water spectacles for the viewer. This is, as you would guess, undemanding and uncomplicated fluff, but still manages to differentiate itself from her other films by way of its premise and how the story unfolds. It may be missing a sidekick for comic relief, like Jimmy Durante or Red Skelton, but is a good time for all. I hope you will find this and find it "easy to love."

Esther Williams plays a romantically unattached water-skiing secretary who longs to stop "walking on the water" and be some man's wife; Van Johnson and Tony Martin are her potential choices for a husband. Despite fine aquatic sequences filmed at Florida's Cypress Gardens, this romantic comedy is awfully stale. As helmed by plodding director Charles Walters, everything here is made to seem intentionally innocuous, which doesn't lend the picture much staying power. Even Esther's big moments in the water are not quite up to the mesmerizing leaps from her previous swimming vehicles, though they are preferable to the asides with the men, both of whom are colorless. Carroll Baker, in her film debut as Martin's disgruntled ex-girlfriend, is the liveliest of the bunch. Flimsy stuff, indeed. *1/2 from ****

Easy to Love may yet when the definitive history of film is written to be Busby Berkeley's ultimate triumph. No longer confined by a motion picture sound studio, Berkeley stages a water ballet finale that is probably his ultimate fantasy number.I have no doubt that somebody at MGM got together with someone at Florida's Cypress Gardens and decided to make a film promotion of the place. In essence that's what you have here. MGM shot the whole thing down there in Florida and the technicolor photography is spectacular.When MGM did its compilation film That's Entertainment it was also mentioned that for one and one star alone did that studio construct a sound stage just for her. That would be Esther Williams, swimming star and movie star.Esther's place at MGM was something akin to Sonja Henie's at 20th Century Fox. A sports star who was already a celebrity before becoming an actress, Esther because the Olympics of 1940 was canceled did not quite have the clout Henie did when dickering with the MGM brass. Yet Esther was as good a businesswoman as Henie and MGM did quite all right by her in marketing her to the public. She does some numbers in the tank, but that finale is something else.For those of you who have only seen the finale because of That's Entertainment, the story is three guys and Esther and who she will choose. Her choice is her boss at Cypress Gardens Van Johnson, nightclub singer Tony Martin, and her swimming partner John Bromfield.Tony Martin sings the Cole Porter classic title tune and several other numbers, the best of which is one sung with a chorus of senior citizens and Esther, That's What a Rainy Day is For. I particularly like that one it's perfectly suited to Martin's style. Besides the finale Esther a very cute number dressed in a clown get up with a seal and chimpanzee and a mechanical alligator. According to her memoirs they were among her most memorable co-stars. I think it's unfortunate that Easy to Love did not utilize the musical talents of Van Johnson. He was signed by MGM in fact after he was spotted in the cast of Broadway's Too Many Girls. Of course he was no match for Tony Martin as a singer, but in films like Till the Clouds Roll By and Brigadoon he more than held his own. In fact MGM should have used him more in musicals generally than they did.And for we who appreciate these things there's the sight of John Bromfield who spends most of the film in a bathing suit.Easy to Love is quite the spectacle and real easy to take.

Olympic-swimming-hopeful turned MGM-screen-sensation Williams does her thing as only she could in this light musical. She plays an overworked employee of Florida's Cypress Gardens (owned in this film by Johnson) who gets a chance to hit the big time for four times the money and half the work. While on a trip to New York City, in which Johnson works her like a galley slave, she falls for suave singer Martin who introduces her to a big-time producer. However, despite his autocratic treatment of her, she loves Johnson and can't decide what road to take. Meanwhile, back in Florida, she has yet another man to contend with, her hunky swim partner Bromfield, who wants to marry her. Worked in between all the romantic shenanigans and misunderstandings are several splashy (pun intended) swimming and/or skiing productions and a large handful of silky love songs sung by Martin. The film is simple, undemanding entertainment with beautiful and creative aquatic and water-ski moments to enliven the more familiar and routine romantic plotline. Williams is absolutely gorgeous in or out of the water and her acting, while it isn't anything tremendous, is perfectly acceptable as she shows affection and not a little amount of spunk. Johnson's character is pretty obnoxious at times, but he and Williams have a good rapport together. As an actor, Martin sings beautifully, but he's smooth enough not to detract from the film. It's hard to imagine Williams even glancing anywhere else but at the tanned, buff Bromfield, who spends a great deal of his screen time in teensy black swim trunks (but is just as yummy in pastel sportswear!) Baker has one scene as Martin's suspicious girlfriend. It's always a feast for the eyes when Williams swims in one of Busby Berkeley's elaborate concepts. Here she shares a blossom-strewn love duet with Bromfield, is the centerpiece of a skiing spectacular and hams it up as a clown in a slam-bang circus number (looking like the result of an affair between Ronald McDonald and Lucille Ball.) It should be noted that she was pregnant during the filming of this movie! Like most films of this ilk, it all turns out with a happy (if unbelievable!) ending for all. Martin's denouement is particularly amusing.