Take Me Out to The Ball Game

Busby Berkeley's TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME, starring Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Esther Williams, is utterly, atrociously, horribly bad.

Kelly, Sinatra, Williams, and the supporting cast don't act - they merely mark time between uninspired musical numbers. The story, your basic love triangle, isn't interesting because there's no real sense that any of these people even like one another. The comedy falls flat, Kelly's dancing is tied down by his costars, and not even the pool number can do much more than put a check in a box.

Here's the setup: Kelly and Sinatra are, basically, Ruth and Gherig, a couple of ballplayers on the vaudeville circuit between seasons. Gher-, er, Sinatra is all smiles and enthusiasm, while Kelly's all about the money and has fallen out of love with baseball. When these guys finally show up to spring training, there's bad news: the team's owner has died, leaving it to his stripper wife, who ... oh, wait, that's from a better movie. This movie's bad news is that the owner had died and left the team to his niece, a woman who, dontcha know it, has a talent for and knowledge of baseball. You can fill in the rest of the dots from here, but why bother? It's the middle of summer - why not just go to a ball game, instead?