Famous dancing stars Mikhail Baryshnikov, Liza Minnelli, Sammy Davis, Jr., Ray Bolger and Gene Kelly host this tepid retrospective on classic dance numbers from musical films (most of them made at M-G-M), a trend begun in 1974 with the song-oriented "That's Entertainment!" Spotlighting the high-energy dance sequences from Hollywood's chestnuts must have seemed like a no-brainer, but what isn't discussed is why today's dance films have proved to be no threat to the masters. It's a piqued, juiceless formula capped with cold charisma. Our hosts (and hostess Minnelli, who never danced in an M-G-M film and is here only by proxy) have very little light to shed on the history of dancing cinema, and it all quickly congeals into a moist-eyed, redundant piece of anemic nostalgia. *1/2 from ****
Review of That's Dancing!
