The movie balances the drab despair of the depression era and the characters' sad lives with brightly colored dream-fantasy lavish musical sequences. Fred Astaire, who was powerless to prevent the reuse of his old footage detested the film: "I have never spent two more miserable hours in my life. Every scene was cheap and vulgar. They don't realise that the thirties were a very innocent age, and that should have been set in the eighties — it was just froth; it makes you cry it's so distasteful."

from the wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennies_from_Heaven_%281981_film%29

(oh lighten up Fred)