Even most of the best musicals frankly have crap for a storyline. They're mostly just setups for the dance set pieces. Fred meets Ginger, impresses her with his superior dance prowess, dance bliss, forced fight, reconciliation dance.
The real special strength of the Finian's Rainbow movie by contrast, however, is precisely the STORY AND SCRIPT. This has an interesting story, with dialogue and a fascinating odd philosophical speculation. The lyricist Yip Harburg was a damned pinko type who eventually tangled asses with McCarthy and the dreaded HUAC. He also wrote the lyrics to "Over the Rainbow" and "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?".
In the meantime, he expressed his political ideas not by destroying a mask of the president on stage a la Pearl Jam, but rather by writing a parable about money, including the classic songs "That Great Come and Get It Day" and "When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich." This took some actual serious creative effort.
The story involves a mischievous old Irishmen- Astaire as the titular Finian. He has stolen a pot of leprechaun's gold, and has come to America to bury it. Near as he can figure, see, there's some kind of magic in the American soil that turns gold into wealth, into bunches of stuff. He's come to bury the already magical leprachaun's gold somewhere identified as within a couple of miles of Fort Knox. On this basis alone, the movie gets a couple of extra Al points for being at least nominally set in Kentucky.
Of course, the leprachaun from whom he stole the gold has come after him. In short, he wants it back. He argues that humans should not have gold. It will only hurt them, bring bad things to them. This in fact seems to be the case for Mr. Finian.
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