Screen musicals. As a genre. I don’t really like the modern Broadway-esque approach of screen musicals, from the type of vocal stylistics to often the way the music is integrated into the plots. It does not appeal to me at all. I find such films invariably grating.
Older-style musicals? Yes. I like many of them. “42nd Street” and the Berkely films. Bing Crosby’s older Paramount movies, like “Waikiki Wedding” or “Anything Goes.” Early-40s films with wartime swing-band elements. Not quite as keen on MGM, but I do like “Singin’ in the Rain” and “An American in Paris.” The aforementioned Deanna Durbin films from Universal.
But by the mid-50s and into the 60s, probably starting with “Oklahoma,” musicals started getting too damn faggy. And I just don’t like the type of music.
The best screen musicals were the ones that MGM made in the ‘40s and ‘50s. ‘Meet Me in St Louis’ ‘Singin in the Rain’, ‘The Band Wagon’. Stuff like ‘Oklahoma!’, Carousel, and South Pacific were overblown cinematic adaptations of great Broadway shows.