Movie Review: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers joins the long list of dreadful movies that won an Oscar. At least it was for music.

The clunky, sexist script is made slightly more bearable by some wonderfully choreographed dance sequences (the Barn Raising springs to mind!) and a charismatic performance by cute as a button Jane Powell.

The plot begins with an arrogant backwoodsman who comes to town to sell some beaver pelts, buy some coffee and tobacco, and also to find a wife. In one afternoon. He plans to bring her back to his homestead to be nurse, maid and cook for him and not one, not two , but seven brothers.

Of course, he leaves this choice little piece of information out when propositioning poor little Milly (Jane Powell).

She takes all seven slobs in stride and sets about the arduous task of teaching these oafs some manners, with no help from her new husband. She wants to turn them into gentlemen so that they can court and find wives to begin farms of their own.

Her husband laughs in her face, then sneaks the boys into town in the dead of night to steal off with their woman of choice stuffed into a sack and slung over their shoulders. (Quite literally, I'm afraid.)

As we might expect from a movie made in 1954, this all turns out just fine for the men as the little ladies turn out to secretly have longed for this fate all along. Ugh. Oklahoma it ain't.