Annie Get Your Gun (1950)

 

Genre: Musical/Romance

Time: 1h 47mins

Directors: George Sidney, Busby Berkeley

Quick Summary: The story of the great sharpshooter Annie Oakley, who rose to fame while dealing with her love/professional rival, Frank Butler.

This is actually rather charming, it's nothing too extraordinary though.

It's loud and colourful, and not afraid to be brass. It jumps from song to song, like an excited child wanting to see what's next. I personally thought only a small handful of songs were good, the rest are pretty forgettable or not that interesting.

I liked the enemies-to-lovers trope that is portrayed in this, Keel and Hutton both portray headstrong characters really well. A lot of my enjoyment was watching them butt heads with each other, but then sing about how much they liked each other when in private. With the two it was a constant game of "I can do better than you." which always escalated rapidly and was always pretty cute to see them teasing each other by the end.

The costume designs are something I really like about this, as they're always bold, bright and equally as loud as the film. Honestly, they were incredibly detailed as well, with a lot of them having intricate embroidery. Another thing is how impressive the stunts were, or appeared to be. One is Annie standing on horseback and shooting clay pigeons. Even if they were only fake, it was still pretty amusing to watch.

One thing I will note about this, being from the '50s, it is incredibly racist towards Indians and pokes fun at a lot of stereotypes towards them. It's very old school in its humour which didn't always land with me. Another thing this suffers from is needing to be dragged out for a theatrical run, so at times it feels like some scenes go on for way too long. 

Don't let it stop you from watching this charming romance though, as it is very cute a lot of the time. It relishes in the old romantic ways and it plays out very dreamily at times. 

6/10