BlinkDash

That grizzled old Victor Argo plays the owner is almost too good to be true. That he is named Sal is inevitable. That he is the longtime boyfriend of Billie's mother Laney (Alix Korey) shows that Rose and director Robert Cary have been studying the late show. And of course Rose has another job; she's a waitress at a high-class club headlining Eartha Kitt, playing herself. An early shot frames Billie's face in the round window of the door between the kitchen and the showroom, as she yearningly watches Kitt. This shot is obligatory in all movies about waitresses who want to be stars.

Times are hard for Billie and her mother, who hits the bottle. Sal doesn't want to fire her, and suggests a compromise: She might be able to keep working if she accompanies herself on the piano. Her playing is rusty, so she signs up for lessons, only to discover that her new teacher Elliot (Andrew McCarthy) is the same jerk who sabotaged her at an audition by screwing up the accompaniment. Of course they hate each other. This is essential so that they can love each other later.

There is another possible path Billie could take. Greg Ellenbogen (Cameron Bancroft) has come back into her life. He was the high school hunk she had a crush on, now a 30ish success story who has lots of money and decides (as a logical exercise, I think) that he should get married. They court, they get engaged, she will be financially secure, and her dream of becoming a chanteuse can be forgotten (Greg suggests) as she raises their children and sings -- oh, at parties and benefits and stuff like that.

Is there a person alive who doesn't know whether Billie chooses Greg or Elliot? But of course there must be enormous obstacles and pitfalls along the way, not to mention those kinds of overblown fantasy scenes much beloved of old musicals, where everything ratchets up six degrees into dreamy schmaltz before finally ending with a closeup of the heroine's face as she comes back to earth.

The Andrew McCarthy character inhabits a sparsely furnished walk-up studio, is dyspeptic and cynical, doesn't value his talent, and in general is a clone of the Oscar Levant character. He doesn't chain smoke, the cigarette dangling from his lips while he plays, and that's a missed opportunity. When it's announced that he may move to Paris, I thought -- of course! He wants to be Gene Kelly's roommate in "An American in Paris."

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