#90 ‘Swing Time’

Taps, Tails, and the Tap-Danced Apology for a Plot That Should’ve Been Thrown Down a Staircase

Swing Time (1936) is Fred and Ginger at their most iconic: all floating gowns, featherlight banter, and the kind of gravity-defying tap numbers that make you forget you're watching a man lie, stalk, and sabotage his way into a woman’s life while wearing tails. It’s shimmering, toe-tapping joy—if you don’t mind your romance built on deception, your Black characters rendered in shoe polish, and your leading lady being gaslit in waltz time.

Fred Astaire plays Lucky Garnett, a gambler-slash-dancer who misses his wedding because of a bad case of plot-induced hijinks. To win back his fiancée (a woman so forgettable she barely gets lines), he’s told to earn $25,000 as penance. But the second he arrives in New York, he meets Penny (Ginger Rogers), a dance instructor with killer lines, sharper rhythm, and—tragically—a complete lack of romantic boundaries. Lucky proceeds to lie about everything—his job, his intentions, his availability—and then woos her through sheer dance stamina.

And yes, the dancing is divine. “Pick Yourself Up” is joy incarnate. “Never Gonna Dance” is a slow-burn heartbreak in tap form. When Fred and Ginger move together, time bends. But then comes “Bojangles of Harlem”—the musical blackface number Astaire performs as a “tribute” to Bill Robinson, which is the cinematic equivalent of setting your tap shoes on fire and calling it a candlelight vigil. It's racist, full stop. Not just a product of its time, but a stain on its legacy, and no amount of choreography can shuffle past that.

Ginger Rogers, as always, does everything Astaire does but backwards and in heels—and with more charm than the script deserves. Penny is smart, funny, and talented, and yet the film rewards her with a man who treats honesty like a dance step he hasn’t rehearsed. Their chemistry is effortless; the writing, less so. She spends most of the film forgiving Lucky for manipulating her life, her job, and her emotions. And because it’s all set to music, we’re meant to swoon rather than scream.

The supporting cast includes a best friend with all the personality of a prop hat, and a comic relief subplot involving a bumbling sidekick and a fiancé who deserves better from life, the screenplay, and possibly the state. But Swing Time doesn’t care about structure—it cares about spectacle. It wants to dazzle you into submission. And it almost does.

3.5 out of 5 airborne ascots
(One for Rogers’ bone-deep brilliance. One for Astaire’s immaculate timing. One for the choreography that still stuns. Half a star for the costumes and camera work that make elegance look easy. The missing stars? Vanished in a puff of tap dust and minstrel show makeup, along with the hope that Hollywood could deliver joy without stepping on someone else’s dignity to get there.)