Two sailors on shore leave head out for four days of partying – only to become involved in the affairs of an aspiring singer and her precocious nephew. Anchors Aweigh was the first of three MGM musicals pairing Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly (it was followed by Take Me Out to the Ball Game and On the Town, both in 1949). While it was nominated for five Oscars at the time, in retrospect it is the least interesting of those three films. It is best remembered today for its tap dancing duet between Kelly and an animated Jerry the Mouse. While it is an accomplished sequence, the rest of the picture has a tendency to underwhelm and drag.

Part of the problem – a part that also affects Take Me Out to the Ball Game – is that the film positions Sinatra in the lead with Kelly as a semi-comedic sidekick. Its true that Sinatra was a capable actor, although his performances came well after Anchors Aweigh, and it goes without saying that he was a tremendous vocalist. Kelly, on the other hand, was also proving himself a strong actor and singer, as well as the best male dancer on screen since Fred Astaire. The full extent of Kelly’s stardom would manifest in the following decade, but here he feels painfully like a true star waiting in the wings while Sinatra dominates. By On the Town the partnership feels much better balanced.

You can feel the imbalance in the way the film vacillates over its central romance. Kathryn Grayson does her very best, but Susan seems a relatively thankless role. Her scenes with Sinatra lack chemistry, and it is not until late in the picture that the film has her spar with Kelly instead. More successful is Dean Stockwell as Susan’s young nephew Donald. He plays the part with a good balance of confidence and cuteness that never quite becomes cloying to watch. Certainly he and Kelly share better chemistry onscreen that Sinatra and Grayson do.

At 140 minutes the film is considerably too long, and it is most apparent when a final hour struggles to transform and extend its narrative. Quite simply not enough happens to justify the running time, and the songs – mostly by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn – are not memorable or catchy enough to act as a distraction. To a large extent it feels mostly on par for director George Sidney who, despite directing a number of popular hits like Annie Get Your Gun, Kiss Me Kate, and Pal Joey, never quite managed to helm an all-out classic.

There is decent material to entertain fans of Kelly or Sinatra, but there is precious little to hold the best elements together and form an overall entertaining picture. It is a decidedly mid-range musical from MGM, a studio that elsewhere produced some of the very best ones.