Swing Time was one of the many Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers collaborations. I don't know about their other movies, but this one wasn't great.
I always like Ginger Rogers (especially in a really cute movie called Bachelor Mother) -she is spunky and has great presence. Fred Astaire I had never seen before, but he seemed charismatic, and the two had okay chemistry. The dancing was beautiful. They moved so well together, and were so graceful. I also loved Astaire singing The Way You Look Tonight. The plot of the movie, however, was very weak and contrived. They wanted another vehicle for Astaire and Rogers to act and dance together, and wrote out a script accordingly to fit their needs, without really caring if the story was any good, and it's not.
Astaire is Lucky, a dancer who needs to make $25,000 in order to marry his fiancee by order of the girl's father, heads to New York to gamble and earn the money. His first day there he meets Penny (Rogers), a dance instructor. After making a bad first impression, he helps save her job (after initially getting her fired), and agrees to become her dancing partner and audition at a club. He forgets his fiancee so fast it makes your head spin. After a brief period of trying to fight his love for Penny, he gives in to his feelings, only to almost lose her when she discovers the fiancee comes to town. Hijinks, hijinks, hijinks, happy ending.
With no time spent explaining Lucky's change in heart, he appears hopelessly fickle. That makes it really hard to invest in the Lucky/Penny relationship, if I think he will forget her just as easily as the first girl. The jokes flop badly, and a scene at the end with all of them laughing uproariously at the situation felt awkward.
I would like to check out one of the earlier Rogers/Astaire pairings to see if perhaps it worked more naturally before the studio started churning out their movies to make more money.
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