Rounding out Musical Week with something more recent than the 1950's, yet still had Gene Kelly involved, is the most loved musical in the Pixar universe, Hello, Dolly! The movie was considered a flop in its initial release, as it made only half of the $25 million budget (approx. $175 million today) at the box office. But that didn't deter the Oscar Committee from giving it seven nominations, of which three were awarded: Best Art Direction, Best Score, and Best Sound. The four awards that were missed were Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Cinematography, and Best Picture. Gene Kelly in the director's seat, this film was bound to be a singing and dancing extravaganza, which it is, and there were not many moments when the movie lagged. Everyone is always moving, whether it be their bodies, their mouths or both. The dialogue was snappy and the lines were coming out right on top of the other. It was a bit of a challenge to keep up with it all, and I was grateful I had the captions running while watching. I was slightly annoyed that the captions were only for the speaking parts. None of the songs had captioned lyrics. A minor problem since the musical numbers were done very well.
Except maybe, "It Takes A Woman." I knew that Walter Matthau was not in many musicals, but I didn't fully realize this was the ONLY musical he was in. Not to say he's worse than Pierce Brosnan, but his singing talent was at the bottom of the cast.
There were times when Erini was contented to watch, such as the 14th Street Parade scene, which was quite the ordeal with hundreds of people on screen for the final shot, not to mention the vast array of horses. The various dance scenes had held her borderline-four-year-old attention span for more than a few microseconds as well. I'm sure that if my daughter had a better understanding of the English language, she might have been able to follow Dolly Levi's (Barbra Streisand) flow of woman talk that was almost fast enough to put this Latina to shame.
That said, the only reason I was able to control my urge to plug my ears with steel wool was that Barbra Streisand charming and conniving performance always seemed to stop right at the line of downright annoying. A toe went over now and then, but then she went right back to her moderate degree of cute and coy. The elaborate outfits also kept my mind distracted from the annoyances that cropped up, ie. during "So Long, Dearie," I was focusing more on the impressive headpiece, hair style, and fabulous dress she was sporting rather than the song itself. I will admit, Streisand can act, she can sing, it's just puts me off when she appears to be realigning her jaw while singing.
Above all else, Michael Crawford's ham of a performance was Erini's favourite part of the feature. This is probably due to the fact that he was in every one of the parts when she was very actively engaged: 1) Put On Your Sunday Clothes, 2) It Only Takes a Moment, and 3) The closing number which had a reprisal of both songs. To give you a hint as to why, throughout the songs she kept saying, "It's just like the one in Wall-E!"
Yes, my daughter is a Pixar fan at heart, but she has humoured me enough to sit through all these musicals, and enjoyed herself a number of times as well.
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