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State Fair Movie Review

State Fair is a 1945 Technicolor musical film directed by Walter Lang and starring Dana Andrews, Jeanne Crain and Dick Haymes. It’s a fun, but slight musical.

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“You know, those judges at the fair,

they like a little snifter now and then“

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During their annual visit to the Iowa State Fair, the Frake family enjoy many adventures. Proud patriarch Abel has high hopes for his champion swine and his wife Melissa enters the mincemeat and pickles contest. This movie represents a tradition that is now long gone in Hollywood – a family story about regular people attending a fair in a small town. It’s, thus, very antiquated in that subject matter, but undeniably pleasingly old-fashioned.

There are aspects in this film that really worked and things that were totally unnecessary. The latter consists of those romantic subplots that were entirely needless to the overall story and were subpar in dialogue and poor characterization. The former fared better and here I am talking about the overall pastoral and happy-go-lucky atmosphere to the film that was very appealing and downright wonderful.

The acting is okay, but the characters failed to hook me as they were slim and underwritten. The thin plot was barely a plot, but the slice-of-life elements were quite intriguing. The production design, costumes and editing were all very good as was the directing.

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The highlight of State Fair is clearly the soundtrack. This is one rather solid musical that is not among the best, but it’s far from the worst from this period. The songs range from passable to great with the standout being the Oscar-winning number called It Might as Well Be Spring. The filmmakers clearly knew what they had here, so they milked the hell out of this song by including it multiple times throughout its runtime, which was justified in this instance as the song is uplifting, well sung and very memorable. Overall, this remake is better than the 1933 original.