State Fair series

(On TV, January 2020) I’m on a mission to see all 1960s Ann-Margret movies, but that didn’t make it any easier to power through State Fair, a wholly unremarkable musical remake of what I presume are two better movies. As a family of four makes its way to the Texas state fair with distinct objectives in mind, the film slogs through useless and forgettable musical numbers until the base outline of a plot emerges. (“It’s dollars to donuts that our state fair is the best state fair in our state” is mind-numbing enough, and even more so the fiftieth time you hear it.) Ann-Margret finally shows up as a state fair circuit dancer with a long succession of momentary dalliances, but while her red mane remains spectacular, her character is far too dark to take advantage of her screen persona—and doesn’t fit the rest of the film. Time has not been kind to this remake, as it creaks under a story first thought in the 1930s and songs from the 1940s, and unable to take advantage of the story’s spicier moments given the context of the time. It’s movies like State Fair that show how dull the musicals had become by the 1960s.