Perhaps I did “An American in Paris” a disservice by watching it while taking dialaudid during a thunderstorm. I’m not sure that it would’ve made much more sense had I not been drowsy and occasionally hallucinating, though. The 1951 Best Picture winner is based on a George Gershwin composition. It seems to me that it would take a giant leap of the imagination to take a piece of music and extrapolate a movie from it, but I guess that’s why writer Alan Jay Lerner was a big-time award-winning screenwriter and I am a stay-at-home mom with a blog.

The story centers on a love triangle that’s almost a rectangle except that no one’s told poor wealthy Milo (Nina Foch, and is Milo a great name for a fiesty gal or what?) that starving artist Jerry (Gene Kelly) just isn’t that into her. He’s fallen for the doe-eyed Lise (Leslie Caron), who in turn is supposed to be marrying Henri the entertainer (Georges Guetary). And there’s also a concert pianist who’s never actually performed in a concert except for in that one wacky dream sequence that I’m pretty sure wasn’t a dialaudid hallucination.

I did enjoy Gene Kelly’s song-and-dance to “I Got Rhythm” with the little French waif brigade. I like that song, and it was a charming little number. Over all, though, the story seemed secondary to the music and dancing, which I guess makes sense considering the movie’s origins. But the final synopsis is: I didn’t love “An American in Paris,” and I don’t think I would’ve even on a normal, non-prescription-painkiller day.