AllMovie

The nadir of Esther Williams' career at M-G-M, both on and off the screen (she didn't see eye-to-eye with director Sidney Lanfield), Skirts Ahoy remains a noisy, unfunny and at times unintelligible mish-mash. The writers visibly had problems getting Miss Williams into that darn pool -- which she finally does, twice, performing with a couple of kids who looks as if they belonged in The Village of the Damned and an inflatable beach toy. The scribes also failed to give Vivian Blaine anything funny to say or do and her road company Adelaide quickly becomes grating. Happily, Blaine rebounded a couple of years later when she reprised her adenoidal chorus girl in the fine screen version of Guys and Dolls (1955). As for Skirts Ahoy, even guest stars Debbie Reynolds, Bobby Van, Keenan Wynn and Billy Eckstine fail to amuse and the only sincere performance in the film comes from veteran vaudevillian and B-Western sidekick Emmett Lynn as a kindly plumber.