Wonderful character development!

Sorry, this movie sucks

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Well, right off the bat, I will admit that I love this movie. I know it almost bankrupted 20th Century Fox and that the critics were lukewarm about it on release in 1969, but they were flat-out wrong. And the perspective afforded by the passage of time has seen this become one of the most-loved of the Hollywood blockbuster musicals.The principals in the cast are all wonderful. Streisand is simply gorgeous and sings beautifully, as does Marianne McAndrew. Matthau is, well, typical Matthau: all wonderful hang-dog expressions of exasperation and a grouchy exterior hiding a warm-hearted soul. Michael Crawford, in an early role, doesn't quite have the voice he developed later in life, but it suits the part of the shy and nervous Hackl. The music is fabulous. It is one of Jerry Herman's very best pieces of work, in my opinion. It's full of great songs and the finale set-piece, when Dolly returns to the Harmonia Gardens, is magnificent, along with Louis Armstrong's great singing.Gene Kelly had Michael Kidd onboard as choreographer and he produced some superb set-pieces. The parade scene is incredible and required hundreds of extras. The story might be a bit thin, but the production values more than make up for it. The sets are remarkable, as are the costumes. The fact it was shot in 65mm Todd/AO means that it is a great visual experience, with tremendous detail visible.This is a truly great musical movie. If you haven't seen it, you really, really, should. You'll been for a treat.

Rip-snorting musical from 20th Century-Fox, turning its backlot into New York City, circa 1890 while telling the tale of widow Dolly Levi, an indefatigable meddler and matchmaker who hopes to deliver herself into the arms of an eligible storekeeper from Yonkers. Producer Ernest Lehman adapted his screenplay from the popular stage musical with a book by Michael Stewart, based on Thornton Wilder's "The Matchmaker" (itself filmed without music in 1958). Director Gene Kelly attempts a breathless pace right from the start, which leaves the early scenes feeling rushed and hyperactive. Professional critics in late 1969, perhaps put off by the unimaginable-for-its-time $25 million budget, complained that the picture was overblown; however, in hindsight, this is inconsequential, as the scenario begs for a huge presentation...and a huge star in the lead. Barbra Streisand (deemed too young to be portraying a widow) is a marvelous Dolly: a firebrand (and a firecracker) who knows nothing of subtlety, she goes for the gut, as the role requires. As her reluctant intended, Walter Matthau looks unhappy and seems stuffy, but repeat viewings reveal this to be the character and not necessarily Matthau's disposition at the time (he and Streisand failed to get along while filming). The song numbers, particularly "Just Leave Everything To Me", "Before The Parade Passes By" and the celebrated title tune, are joyous, and Michael Kidd's line-'em-up choreography is often stunning in widescreen. The film does run too long, and it loses some vitality whenever Streisand is busy and the pixilated juveniles take over, but Kelly is determined to give his audience a showcase--a slam-bang, old-fashioned musical parade with pearls and feathers and floor-length gowns. At that, he succeeded. *** from ****

An expensive, large-scale and larger-than-life musical stars an odd pairing of Barbra Streisand and Walter Matthau, it is only Streisand's second film after her surprising Oscar coup in big screen débutante FUNNY GIRL (1968), what's more opportune than an out-and-out musical to exploit Streisand's mellifluous voice and continue her winning streak as a new movie star was born! Also directed by the musical legendary Gene Kelly, it is one of the most lavish and enjoyable vaudeville ever! It is one of the top-grossing movie of 1969, but due to the decline of the cinema attendance, it was unsuccessful to earn back its pricey budget, hereinafter, the genre once was Hollywood's predominant sustenance began to ebb until MOULIN ROUGE! (2001,8/10) and CHICAGO (2002, 8/10) have bucked the trend in the noughties. An opening tracking shot follows galloping hoofs, shining shoes from motley passengers, widow-cum-matchmaker Dolly Levi (Streisand) needs a splendid entrance to give away her name-card in the train station, she is on her way to conquest the half-a-millionaire bachelor Horace Vandergelder (Matthau) in Yonkers, so she assists the elopement of Horace's niece Ermengarde (Ames) with the willowy artist Ambrose (Tune), sabotages Horace's proposal intention with milliner Irene Molloy (McAndrew) by setting her up with Horace's clerk Cornelius (Crawford) beforehand. In the New York one-day excursion, it encompasses a park cruise, a grand parade and a sumptuous banquet with many delightful interludes, culminates in a boisterous roughhouse leaving Horace and Dolly negating their possibility of marriage and whatsoever. Maybe it drags too long (a total running time of 2.5 hours) for all the fanfare of the stunningly orchestrated choreography and catchy music number renditions (Louis Armstrong has a charming cameo as the band leader in the hotel ), the banal and invariable happy-ending arrives hastily no matter how reluctant it seems to be. Leaving aside the pompous man-seeking character settings of Dolly Levi (an overachieving rip- off of MARY POPPINS 1964, 7/10), who is inexplicably a power house figure in the posh New York high society, and the sanctimonious quest of a sign from her late husband to let her go, Streisand is a composed singer radiant with her own flair, garrulously eloquent in her non- singing performances, but the lack of spark between her and Matthau is embarrassing. It is Crawford and McAndrew who vindicate the true romance in their subplot, which dissipates the stinking haughtiness all over the place. In a word, HELLO, DOLLY! is a family-friendly, entertaining picture but curtailed by its own unwieldy flamboyance, but Gene Kelly and Jerry Herman should be hailed for their paramount knack in cooking such a superfluously dazzling banquet which would be much better with some sensible self-moderation.

It is hard to finish watching "Hello, Dolly!" without wanting to strangle director Gene Kelly, or at least sue him for malpractice. The acting is generally atrocious. I hope this won't hurt any of the actors' feelings, those still alive, because glimpses of competence sneak into their performances now and then, presumably when Kelly wasn't looking.The most outrageously bad performance is delivered by E.J. Peaker, who seems to be delivering her lines on Laugh In or the Grand 'Ole Opry. Several actors sometimes seem to have dubbed their lines in a studio. Tommy Tune would be lucky to pass a high school drama class with his wide-eyed, goofy performance. Even high schoolers wouldn't ham it up so much. The only relatively natural acting comes from Marianne McAndrew and Walter Matthau. I suspect Matthau wouldn't let Kelly push him into an exaggerated performance. He probably could see what was coming, that the over-acting would be the film's Achille's heel. We don't see the full Matthau edgy persona; he seems a bit distant. Matthew Crawford delivers the most amusing performance of the film. When this movie came out, everyone was shocked and disappointed that they weren't going to get to see Carol Channing play Dolly. Everyone in America knew the music, and many had the Broadway cast album, so Channing WAS Dolly. And everyone in America would have gone to see the movie if Channing were in it. Barbara Streisand, on the other hand, was too Sixties in most people's mind to work, and not Matthau's type. The Broadway production was an enormous success. I don't know why because I never saw it. There was the great music, some dancing, and the fantasy of traveling back 70 years to 1890s New York City. Fantasies don't need fancy sets; if anything, too much realism can interfere. And that's one of the mistakes this movie makes. The sumptuous sets are among the most amazing ever created for a movie, but were a total waste of money. Guys and Dolls was set in NYC, but many of the movie sets were painted backdrops, and little of it looked realistic, but that didn't stop it from being a great musical. Most musicals are that way, and for a reason: they are fantasies. Most of the acting was stylized Broadway performances, which clashed with such realistic sets, and just didn't fit a movie. Most of the performances and lines were rushed, which is a problem because the plot gets a bit complex in the beginning. Also, the scenes tend to shift without much connection or flow. It's as though this was a multi-track recorded movie, with each person delivering their performances separately in a sound studio, without any real interaction. There is ZERO chemistry between all of the performers. Early on, I thought to myself, they should have hired Ernest Lehman to write the script. So I checked, and, oops, they did! Lehman did the screen adaptation of The Sound of Music and wrote North by Northwest. He puts a lot of effort into his writing, so I have to believe this screenplay was as good an adaptation as you could get.So what went wrong? The directing. Some directors leave actors alone, for the most part, and some give them specific instructions. Kelly must have pushed them into these exaggerated performances, and, I suspect, pushed hard. If he had allowed them to use their judgment and let them interact, the movie would have been much better. I think Kelly had been a singer-dancer in too many mediocre musicals that he was told were masterpieces, like An American in Paris. So I think he came to believe that if you had lavish, colorful dance numbers and lots of good music the movie would be a big success. But several of the dance numbers are way over the top, as though he is trying to top Fred Astaire, and have little to do with the story. The dancing waiters during Hello Dolly remind me of the Mel Brooks parody, The Producers (the original with Zero Mostel), which was deliberately trying to be as tacky as possible. Kelly was a pretty good actor, but not great. I guess most of his acting was just being Gene Kelly; perhaps that's why he didn't really know how to direct actors. Just guessing.The bottom line is that a lot of individual elements of Hello, Dolly! are excellent, but the movie is less than the sum of it's part.== The story of Louis Armstrong's hit recording of the title tune is interesting. As I recall, he recorded it in one take, never having heard the tune before, in a studio as a favor. It was released after the Broadway show premiered while Armstrong was on tour, and to his puzzlement, suddenly everyone was requesting he perform Hello, Dolly!, a song he barely remember recording. No one imagined the song would be a hit, including Armstrong, except perhaps the composer. Armstrong re-recorded it in 1964, and, believe me, everyone heard that song on the radio a million times and was whistling the tune; it seemed they never got tired of it. Armstrong had a long career as the premiere jazz musician in America, as well as being a popular performer, but this one song brought him to the attention of a new generation and gave his career a second wind. It was not a sophisticated jazz performance, but I don't think Satchmo minded; he always seemed to want to make music his audience would enjoy.By the time the movie was finally released in 1969, the music had gotten a bit stale. The world had changed, and musical tastes had changed, too. I hope people today can forgive this movie its flaws so they can enjoy the delightful music.