SnoopyStyle Band leader Steve Hollis sees the end of the big band era. He decides to head off to New York and bassist Corny LaSalle joins him. Along the way, they encounter young kids heading to a Saturday night dance. Steve is intrigued and finds them dancing to the new Rock N Roll with Bill Haley & His Comets. He signs up the band and dancer Lisa Johns. He sweet talks high powered agent Corinne Talbot but she rejects the new sound for personal reasons.This is one of the first Rock N Roll films. It's the start of a new subgenre. Certainly, this is dated to some extend especially the dialogue. The premise is simplistic. It turns into a woman scorned story. One can't expect it to be ground breaking in every way. It's enough to have The Platters perform on the same stage as other non-black performers. It's good enough to be good enough. The music is great and iconic performed by the real bands. Everything else is filler and they are functional in that light. It's a solid start of this sub-genre and a great slice of music history.

LeonLouisRicci The problem of the 50's Rock n Roll movies is that you have to suffer through so much pablum and propaganda to get to a few bona fide Rockers, R&B, and justified archival songs. This one has two songs from the Platters and two from Bill Haley. The rest is flatulent filler. Cringe inducing dialog and attempted hip talk from on and off screen squares. Unbearable performances from posers, wannabes, and opportunists. Historians and fans should be grateful for the 10 minutes of irreplaceable, iconic and cool footage. The other 70 minutes are the corporate trappings only fit for the completest and the masochistic.Some good jitterbugging from some professional teen-agers add some eye-candy but for the most part and this goes for all these types of films from the era, the movie studios and the adults just didn't get it and one doubts if they tried at all, except as a marketing mechanism.

tavm After its inclusion in the hit film The Blackboard Jungle, the song "Rock Around the Clock" was such a smash hit that B-movie producer Sam Katzman decided to make a movie with that title and have the single's act, Bill Haley and the Comets, perform that one, "See You Later, Alligator" and a few others here. He also booked Freddie Bell and His Bellboys and The Platters for additional appeal. I wonder if this was the only time the latter group performed their hits, "Only You" and "The Great Pretender" for the big screen. It's mainly for what I cited above as well as being the first time that this was a picture that showcased Rock 'n' Roll nearly in its entirety that would give it interest today. Otherwise, it's just a mostly bland plot about a manager trying to give Haley and his combo their big break with complications like his former female manager girlfriend vs. his current one in teenage dancer Lisa Gaye. (Seeing him and Lisa suddenly kiss after just meeting gave me the creeps!) Also, the guy who coined the new music sound's name, Alan Freed, does his introductions when the acts come on. So on that note, Rock Around the Clock is well worth a look. Oh, and unlike the end of The Blackboard Jungle, when the title song here ended the movie, there was no Big Band flourish to finish it. P.S. While the one other musical act, Tony Martinez and His Band are good too, it's obvious that-as the plot implied-they have a different appeal, possibly to the potential "squares" in the audience. And one of the Platters-Paul Robi-was born in New Orleans which is a two hour drive from my current home town of Baton Rouge.

dbdumonteil ...and it was not intellectual at the time;people did not listen to the words to the songs,all they wanted to do was dancing.The plot is very thin and almost devoid of interest .A fight between two managers :One of them is in love with Bill Haley and the Comets' dancer .Billy Haley -perhaps because he plays himself,has no love affair like Presley would do.He 's sure a good singer but he is not particularly good-looking.The other manager (a woman) puts a wrench in her colleague's works.Musically,for me ,the two magic moments are the two Platters songs "only you" and "the great pretender".What singers!