Hootenanny Hoot (1963)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
Slight but entertaining musical from MGM has a television director (Peter Breck) and a producer (Ruta Lee) whose marriage is breaking apart. He leaves town a soon finds himself in a small town in Missouri where he's introduced to a local "hootenanny". After seeing some of the musical acts he tries to get it produced and on television but guess who he'll after meet again? The actual "story" here isn't much as its poorly written and probably done so on purpose. There's no doubt that the main goal of this film was to show off some of the musical performers and as long as you like the music you should have an okay time going through the film. The film follows the same structure as stuff like ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK and TWIST AROUND THE CLOCK and that's to introduce new music to a wider range of people for acceptance. The music here just happens to be country and folk, which the film tries to say is one in the same. I'm sure many people would debate that but either way we get some very good numbers here with the highlight being an appearance by Johnny Cash doing Frankie's Man Johnny. Other numbers include Joe and Eddy's There's a Meeting Here Tonight, The Brothers Four doing Frogg and Little Cory and a strong Abilene by George Hamilton IV. There are a lot of banjos and old-fashion dances going around but I guess that's what a hootenanny is all about. If you hate country music and folk then there's really do reason to check this out as the story isn't strong enough to carry the thing. If you can put up with the music it's worth checking out, although I'm sure many will be hitting the fast-forward button to get to the music.