Sunday, December 23, 2012

Meet Me in St. Louis

In the months leading up to the 1904 World's Fair, the members of the Smith family prepare for the momentous occasion while weathering the ebbs and flows of love, following a bombshell that their father will move them to the dirty and overcrowded city streets of New York and away from their beloved St. Louis home. "Meet Me in St. Louis" is a delightful musical directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Judy Garland,  and is the set on which the two first met. The film is an episodic, unpretentious, and comfortable with not overreaching, while featuring some very fine musical numbers. Garland turns in a sweet performance, Mary Astor and Leon Ames deliver fine turns as her parents, and Margaret Sullivan all but steals the show as the precocious, death obsessed youngest sister.