#11 Singin' in the Rain: She can't act, she can't sing, she can't dance. A triple threat!

1952. dir. Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor, Jean Hagen.

Seen it before? No.

Usually my gripe with musicals is that the characters just randomly break into song at the drop of a hat. I had the opposite problem here. Clearly this movie's reason to exist is the song and dance numbers, but the characters kept breaking into plot. If it was just 90 minutes of musical numbers that would have been fine, but alas.

So the plot, such as it is... Gene Kelly and Jean Hagen play Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont, the Hollywood "it" couple of the silent era, and Donald O'Connor plays Don's life partner best friend from vaudeville Cosmo. Lina has this nails-on-a-blackboard screechy voice (think Harley Quinn from Batman the Animated Series, or Charles Foster Kane's second wife), which is unfortunate because talkies get invented. But then Don meets Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) who can sing and dance, and... y'know, never mind, the plot is silly and the movie more or less abandons it two-thirds of the way through for this lavish "Broadway Melody" number that has nothing to do with anything.

The songs are pretty classic, and Gene Kelly certainly could dance. Daniel watched it with us and totally cracked up during "Make 'Em Laugh". Good times.

Position on the list: 75
And now for something completely different: Now we're watching Reservoir Dogs. haha