I’ve just finished watching Anchors Aweigh, the 1945 musical that first paired Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra. I’d never seen the movie in its entirety before.

The only part I had seen is the famous sequence where Gene Kelly dances with Jerry the Mouse. I rather suspect this is the only part most people have seen, and they probably couldn’t even name the movie it came from. That’s too bad, because it’s really pretty good.

It isn’t up there with your big-time classic musicals like My Fair Lady and Singin’ in the Rain, though it was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, but it’s a hell of a good time. I personally liked it much better than the more critically lauded (at least nowadays) An American in Paris.  It’s got plenty of good songs, a charming though light-and-fluffy story (but that’s what we expect in an MGM Technicolor musical, right?), and Gene Kelly’s always wonderful dancing. A dance with Kelly and Sinatra, who ably keeps up, to the song “I Begged Her” is my personal favorite.

And then there’s the dance with Jerry Mouse. Though it’s unfair that the rest of the movie seems to have been forgotten, this scene deserves every bit of love audiences have for it, and more besides. The dancing’s great and the animation—from the team of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera before they became synonymous with cheap TV cartoons—is wonderful; look at Jerry’s reflection in the polished floor! That scene alone could be the most fun you’ll have watching a movie in a year’s worth of watching movies.

Fortunately, Anchors Aweigh, isn’t two hours of deadwood surrounding one highlight. It’s light, breezy fun, the kind of pleasant diversion they don’t make anymore in the era of $100 million explosion-fests. If you like good times and singin’ and dancin’, you owe it to yourself to watch Anchors Aweigh.

If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:

• Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale
• Fantasia
• Famous People Pooping
• The True Nature of a Familiar Song