Living in St Louis, four young attractive and smart sisters, the Smith daughters, who navigate through daily life challenges and experience the hardships of their age through having their education and their move to live in New York.
Garland achieves true stature with her deeply understanding performance, while her sisterly running-mate, Lucille Bremer, likewise makes excellent impact with a well-balanced performance.
Cut out as a comic relief, [Margaret O'Brien's] Tootie becomes an integral aspect of the film's psychology, as the repressed middle-class anger rearing, if innocently. (PopMatters Essential Film Performances 2013: Musical/Comedy)
The film really belongs to Garland and O'Brien. They make each scene they share pure magic, exuding an effortless confidence which lights up the screen, with the rest of the cast reduced to mere bystanders.
One of the first films to integrate musical numbers into the plot, it explores, without condescension or simplemindedness, the feelings that drive the family members apart and then bring them back together again.