Follow the Fleet

The basic plot of the story is, Bake (Fred Astaire) and Bilge (Randolph Scott) are two sailors, who's fleet has just stopped off in San Francisco. Bake goes to see his old dancing partner, Sherry (Ginger Rogers), and tries to get into working again, but he, throughout the film, keeps on ruining his chances, and making her lose jobs -- by accident. Bilge finds himself meeting up with Sherry's sister, Connie (Harriet Hilliard), which brings about an annoying, and unwanted romance story between the two of them, which isn't working out too well, since Connie is more keen on ideas of marriage, whereas Bilge can't keep away from other women.

So as for the real reason for watching a Fred and Ginger movie, the songs and dances. A highlighted title would be "Let's Face the Music and Dance". It's brilliantly shot, and it's among one of the best (although not THE best) dances Fred and Ginger ever did. It's certainly the main reason to watch this movie. There's also an amusing "practice" dance to "I'm Putting All my Eggs in One Basket", where the two find themselves unprepared, and completely lose what they're doing, but its all the more a fun scene. Unfortunately, you have to put up with Harriet Hilliard singing the terribly annoying "Get Thee Behind Me Satan". There are a number of others, that are worthy to note aswell, such as Ginger singing "Let Yourself Go". Overall the musical scenes are the things that keep the movie going.

So for the really bad, and annoying points to the movie. Nobody cares about Randolph Scott and Harriet Hilliard's scenes together, which can only be described as extremely boring. This is the same problem I had with "Flying Down to Rio", which was equally annoying, with Gene Raymond and Dolores Del Rio". That one can be accepted, due to the fact that it was Fred and Ginger's first movie together. But "Follow the Fleet", being the fifth, you can only wonder why we had to be tortured by such an annoying romance story inbetween their scenes. "Roberta" might have had Irene Dunne taking up some screen time, but she was always enjoyable to watch, and that movie was not ruined in the way that this one has been. We are here to watch Fred and Ginger, not two other people taking up a lot of screen time, and using it so badly.

Overall, the movie does include a number of highlights, and is worth watching, and easily more than "just a few times". Fred and Ginger's other movies together, for the most part, were a lot better, but fans of the two shouldn't be without this movie. It's always good, no matter how many times you watch it over, but if only it could have been saved, and not slightly ruined by the horrible bad points the movie includes. Own a copy of this movie, and enjoy.

The movie featured seven songs by Irving Berlin. Astrid Allwyn and Betty Grable were members of the supporting cast. At this point in her career Harriet Nelson was primarily a singer with prior experience only on the radio and with Ozzie Nelson's band.

Mark Sandrich directed several other excellent films including TOP HAT and HOLIDAY INN.