Two of a Kind

Hollywood's latest slogan is "Movies Are Better Than Ever," but it is hard to prove by two of its latest cinemusicals. Neither better nor worse than any of their predecessors in a long assembly line, both are profusely Technicolored illustrations of creative poverty in the midst of technical plenty. They also share backstage settings and a weakness for toying archly with the idea of unmarried pregnancy--a subject which Hollywood might be expected to regard as no joke.

Nancy Goes to Rio (MGM) works some Latin American backgrounds and tempos into the story of a teen-ager (Jane Powell) who aspires to the theatrical fame already reached by her mother (Ann Sothern) and her grandfather (Louis Calhern). She wins a coveted Broadway role for which her mother believes herself cast. On the way to a vacation in Rio, Jane rehearses it so convincingly in a deck chair that fellow passengers accept her as the character, who is on the way to unwed motherhood. Coffee Tycoon Barry Sullivan falls under suspicion as the man who did her wrong and is thus under some handicap in wooing Jane's glamorous mother.

The double-entendres pile up like cordwood, with hardly a spark of fun. In spots, without risking originality, the songs and dances give the movie some zest. Too often they display the outworn grotesqueries of Carmen Miranda and the excessive juvenility of Actress Powell. Occasionally, to denote conscious hamming by members of the heroine's acting fam ily, the soundtrack breaks into a few pompous bars of Wagner. It is not much of a gag, but it is a handy guide to the intentions of the players.

The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady (Warner) is a thin Irish stew of vaudeville acts, served up in turn-of-the-century Manhattan with a father-doesn't-approve love story. June Haver, one of three overprotected daughters of a crotchety Irish widower (James Barton), defies the old man by going into show business and taking up with Showman Tony Pastor (Gordon MacRae). Another daughter (Marsha Jones), who has already defied him by marrying secretly, is expecting twins. The central gag: learning that one of the girls is pregnant, Barton suspects the worst of June. The music and dance routines strike an efficient, lusterless com promise between vaudeville of the Tony Pastor era and the kind now dispensed by television.

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