Rate 'White Christmas' (1954)

This may be—OK, it is—damning with faint praise, but I don’t dislike it as much as I once did.

I always preferred Holiday Inn (in which, famously, the song “White Christmas” actually premiered), I always thought the Irving Berlin score was one of his weakest (“What Can You Do with a General?” may just be the worst thing Berlin ever wrote).

I didn’t always realize that Danny Kaye was miscast, but watching it now I can easily tell Fred Astaire was the first choice (and Donald O’Connor was the second—the reason, as blogger Jaime Weinman pointed out, that most of Kaye’s songs are about dancing).

But, I dunno, it’s fine. The script (written in part by Melvin Frank and Nelson Panama, a good comedy-writing team) is funny enough. And I always like Bing Crosby.

Incidentally, I actually prefer the the stage adaptation, which raids Berlin’s song catalogue and finds a lot of good lesser-known songs like “Love and the Weather,” most of which are better than those in the movie.