Dangerous When Wet (1953)

(On Cable TV, September 2020) There were a lot of movie musicals in the 1950s, and they can’t all be memorable or effective. Dangerous When Wet, to its credit, does have a semi-memorable hook, what with noted aquatic actor/dancer Esther Williams as the elder daughter of a family of fitness freaks. When their eccentric nature is discovered by a promoter who develops a crush on Williams’s character, he contrives a way to stay close to them by proposing a publicity stunt to have them swim across the English Channel. So far so distinctive, and the film’s most memorable sequence has Esther “swimming” with Tom and Jerry in an animated segment that brings to mind a similar sequence in Gene Kelly’s Anchors Aweigh. The rest of Dangerous When Wet is hit and miss—the opening act in rural America is decently funny, but the film seems to scatter once it heads to Europe and goes back and forth across the channel as an international love triangle develops and resolves itself. Williams herself is a likable presence, although she can’t be as eccentric as the supporting characters that make up her film family. Still, the film suffers from having few snappy tunes or expansive showcase sequences—the Tom and Jerry number is nice, but it’s not over the top. Still, if you’re attuned to the “voice” of 1950s MGM musicals, Dangerous When Wet is a representative example of the form: it can be watched easily, does have a few laughs along the way and features a likable heroine in Williams.