A Latin polo team comes to America, and for some reason this is a big deal. The polo team captain is womanizer Ricardo Montalban. He has a minor injury, and has a session with dufus masseur Red Skelton. Garrett attempts to meet Montalban, not knowing who he is, and mistakes Skelton for Montalban. Skelton plays along to get further with Garrett.
Williams is afraid that her sister will be compromised by Montalban. She visits Montalban and insists he stop seeing her sister. Montalban, who has never even seen Williams' sister, agrees if the knockout Williams will go on a date with Montalban.
The couple are spotted at a nightclub by Wynn, who becomes jealous, and Ted de Corsia, a gangster. de Corsia decides to kidnap Montalban before the polo match so that de Corsia can win a bet against Montalban's team. de Corsia's hulking henchman Mike Mazurki kidnaps Skelton instead.
Because it's a movie, it all works out. Four cast members get married, two cast members get arrested, and Keenan Wynn gets nothing. Because Williams can't possibly design any swimsuits now that she is married to Mr. Corinthian Leather himself.
The supporting cast includes Mel Blanc of Looney Tunes fame, here playing a stereotypical confused Latino with Speedy Gonzales' voice. Also appearing is Xavier Cugat and his full Latin orchestra.
How others will see it. Neptune's Daughter was another box office smash for Esther Williams and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was among the ten biggest box office hits of 1949. It was well regarded in its day, and even won a coveted Academy Award, for Best Song. Although "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is now better known from the shower scene of Elf, its film debut came more than a half-century earlier, in Neptune's Daughter.
Today at imdb.com, the movie has a respectable 1300 user votes. The user ratings exhibit a moderate divide between men over 30 (who grade it 6.3 out of 10) and women over 30 (who grade it 6.9). The user reviews are all over the map. Some enjoy the movie for what it is supposed to be, escapist fun, and others point out story absurdities or its rampant sexism. "This is why we had to have the women's movement."
How I felt about it. Williams and Skelton were the first-billed stars of Neptune's Daughter, while their romantic partners, Montalban and Garrett, were billed below them. Some thirty years later, their careers had reversed. Montalban and Garrett were household names due to their many television appearances, while the careers of Williams and Skelton had petered out. They are all equal now.
Neptune's Daughter has a lot going for it. The choreography is world class, Red Skelton is amusing, Garrett is a real trooper, Esther Williams is glamorous, Mazurki shows excellent comic timing, and Montalban commands the screen whenever he appears. Throw in an Oscar winning song and quality cinematography, and the movie could have been another Take Me Out to the Ball Game, a much better color MGM musical from 1949.
What went wrong? First of all, it is difficult for a movie to be good. The vast majority fall short. This is because they are costly to make, and thus need a big audience to become profitable. This encourages formula, since what worked before should work again. More often, though, it is like an echo in a cave, fainter each time you hear it until it is gone.
Neptune's Daughter has formula all over it: Williams in a swimsuit; Montalban as a latin lover; and Red Skelton as the class clown. They are all good at their respective roles, but it's not enough when the story is weak. Williams transitions from swimming champion to swimsuit designer overnight. Why would Williams agree to marry playboy Montalban when she doesn't even like him? Why would Garrett marry a man who has been lying to her about his very identity? How does Skelton get into the polo match? Would a gangster really kidnap a celebrity athlete to win a bet ... on a polo match? Worst of all, we aren't even supposed to care about such things.