April in Paris (1952)

(On Cable TV, November 2022) See Doris Day. Doris plays April. April is a Broadway chorus girl. April is mistakenly selected as a representative of American culture to Paris. Hence April in Paris. While clearly a second-tier musical, the film does have its good moments. Day is effervescent as she was at that stage of her career, and Ray Bolder is amusing as a stuffy government representative profiting greatly from selecting April as an exemplar of fine American culture. (His tap-dancing number “Life Is Such a Pleasure,” alongside dancers playing Washington and Lincoln, is one of the film’s highlights.) The film also lets loose with “That’s What Makes Paris Paree,” with a bit of extravagant set design and amusingly repetitive lyrics [“The Eiffel Tower!”] and the catchy “I’m Going to Rock the Boat” for choreography. Alas, the overall result is thin gruel compared to other musicals of the era—the plot fits on a napkin, with contrived complications merely delaying the inevitable happy ending. “Slight” is not necessarily a synonym for “bad,” however: it’s just an acknowledgement that there are much better musicals out there. Still, if you have seen those musicals, April in Paris works well enough to be worth a watch. If nothing else, Francophiles will get a chuckle or two.