Things to like about this film: San Francisco locations, Edith Head's costuming, the music.
Things that are much harder to like: Fred Astaire's character, Debbie Reynolds, and the plot.
Reynolds, at age 30, is absurd as an ingenue/debutante.
In the '20s, a studio executive wrote about the young Astaire -- "Can't sing. Can't act. Slightly balding. Can dance a little." Although you'd never know it from the stature he has in Hollywood history, that executive nailed it. Astaire *can't* sing, can barely act, and he's no Cary Grant in the looks department.
There is nothing to like about Fred Astaire in "The Pleasure of His Company", playing a roguish, absentee father who comes back from spending his life entertaining himself abroad and promptly attempts to ruin everyone else's relationships. But for the script that subverts all logic, there could be no explanation for the way he's lionized in this film as a charming man of the world. To me, he could not have been more boorish and pretentious. Take that assessment for whatever its worth.
Things that are much harder to like: Fred Astaire's character, Debbie Reynolds, and the plot.
Reynolds, at age 30, is absurd as an ingenue/debutante.
In the '20s, a studio executive wrote about the young Astaire -- "Can't sing. Can't act. Slightly balding. Can dance a little." Although you'd never know it from the stature he has in Hollywood history, that executive nailed it. Astaire *can't* sing, can barely act, and he's no Cary Grant in the looks department.
There is nothing to like about Fred Astaire in "The Pleasure of His Company", playing a roguish, absentee father who comes back from spending his life entertaining himself abroad and promptly attempts to ruin everyone else's relationships. But for the script that subverts all logic, there could be no explanation for the way he's lionized in this film as a charming man of the world. To me, he could not have been more boorish and pretentious. Take that assessment for whatever its worth.