SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS (1954) *1/2 Jane Powell is very affable in a Dolly Parton prototype way, and she goes after the brothers in precisely the same manner that I imagine Dolly taking with a brood of recalcitrant, and not particularly bright, puppies. If Jane does a fair imitation of Dolly spirituality, Howard Keel's effort at Burt Reynolds turning kind of good ain't all that bad either. There's even occasionally an airbrushed sense of the winding down feel of the Pacific Northwest being domesticated. The problem-the worst problem-is that it's a musical weighed down by a seemingly infinite number of those gutless pop/theater schlock songs that were all the rage at the time. Maybe Joe McCarthy wasn't the worst thing going after all. The dancing is at least as bad, with the synchronized wood chopping as the highlight. I like the painted sets a lot though, and if you emerge more bitter than bemused you probably consider A Christmas Carol a tragedy.
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