With a caustic script by Comden and Green, this spoof of television, advertising, and even Hollywood is an underrated mid-fifties musical worth rediscovering, an offbeat combination of parody and the real thing--great song and dance numbers! Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey and Michael Kidd (the choreographer in his acting debut) are three GIs who vow eternal friendship at the close of World War II and then suffer through an awkward reunion ten years later. Life is sour, each grumbles into his own cocktail, and even good buddies go bad. For each in his own way has turned into a two-bit huckster, with the exception of Dailey, who is a four-bit huckster in a grey flannel nightmare. His advertising and t.v. connections lead the trio into the bright company of dancer Cyd Charisse and t.v. star Dolores Gray.
“From the title on, It's Always Fair Weather is full of ironies which are curious in an MGM musical. The fickleness of human loyalty is at the heart of the story, and Hollywood was seeing that fickleness in the movie-going public of 1955. Here, the big screen takes self-righteous aim at the ‘little screen.' Using the splendors of CinemaScope--including three-way split screen--Hollywood wonders aloud how America could turn from such collossal ingenuity, not to mention sincerity, to the shabby banality of t.v.'s ‘reunion' shows.” Jerry Hiler