AllMovie

The title of Three Sailors and a Girl is enough to cue an audience that this will be an utterly conventional musical, one of those that Hollywood "just doesn't do anymore." In fact, Hollywood shouldn't have been doing this anymore back in 1953, when Sailors was originally released. This is the kind of screenplay that seems to have been copied rather than written. (It's worth pointing out that, even though Sailors is considered a remake of Butter and Egg Man, it has much less in common with that effort than with Born to Dance.) The script is one cliché piled upon another, one trite twist coming after another, unredeemed by freshness or originality and featuring dialogue that ranges from the banal to the painful. Equally painful is the excruciatingly unamusing performance of purported comic relief Jack E. Leonard, especially in the "Show Me a Happy Woman" number, which also features some of Sammy Cahn's less felicitous lyrics. The rest of the cast is better, with Gene Nelson handling his dances well and Gordon MacRae and Jane Powell in good voice. MacRae is especially good performing the enchanting "Face to Face," and he and Powell make the most of Sammy Fain's generally lovely score. Unfortunately, none of the performers can rise above the inanities of the script, which sinks their best efforts.