Redundant and unnecessary.

Crappy film

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I am a big Gilbert and Sullivan fan, and this Mikado is not just the best Mikado but also one of the better G&S productions I've seen. The only problem I had was some slightly fuzzy sound quality, other than that it was delightful and very inventive.The camera work and visual effects are well above average, the sets are wonderfully exotic and the costumes are truly lovely. The music is outstanding, with droll lyrics and often beautiful melodies. The story is standard but very charming, and the dialogue is always delightful, witty and quite subtle sometimes too.As for the choreography, one of the best assets about this Mikado. The Busby Berkeley-like tap dancing is simply splendid and a hoot. There is also some stylish orchestral playing and rock-solid conducting.The Mikado(1987) is blessed by all-round great performances. Eric Idle is a hilarious Ko-Ko and Bonaventure Botone is one of the more convincing Nanki-Poos I've seen, he is very likable. Lesley Garrett as Yum Yum sings beautifully, Mark Richardson is a vocally rich Pish-Tush and Richard Angas is a very imposing and quite seedy Mikado complete with an amazing costume. My favourite performances are Felicity Palmer as Katisha, she sings and acts with humour, nastiness and pathos, and Richard Van Allen as Pooh-Bah, in perhaps the best interpretation on VHS/DVD.All in all, the best Mikado thus far though I am re-watching the Stratford version as soon as possible. 9/10 Bethany Cox

This is the story of a faraway almost-forgotten land. No, not feudal Japan but Britain in1987 when a commercial television company was able to broadcast opera to peak-viewing audiences. Unfortunately, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher put a stop to all that and, in 1992, Thames received its own short, sharp shock when it lost its franchise.When I was 12 years old I was a fairy in Iolanthe. Since then my interest in opera has tended towards the more serious end of the spectrum and I have never seen a Gilbert and Sullivan opera live. My knowledge of The Mikado is limited to the excellent, but truncated, 1939 Hollywood version and the execrable 1996 Australian version which is still, sadly, doing the rounds.We have to be grateful for Sky Arts rediscovery of this English National Opera production, directed by Jonathan Miller, a recording that I did not even know existed. Miller updates the production to the 1920s and there is nothing at all Japanese about the sets or costumes. This may offend a few purists but I found it delightful. It stars Eric Idle as Ko-Ko, bringing his own Little List to the production. His comic timing is wonderful. I particularly enjoyed his licking the Mikado's boot and his exclamation when he has to read the Mikado's decree: "It's in Japanese!" His delivery of Gilbert's dialogue is strangely reminiscent of Monty Python.Lesley Garrett is Yum-Yum, making clear her star quality at a very early stage in her career. There is a hilarious Pish-Tush from Mark Richardson with an outrageous Yorkshire accent and an even more outrageous orange toupee. Richard Van Allen is a droll Pooh-Bah. Bonaventura Bottone is slightly disappointing as a rather fruity Nanki-Poo. Richard Angas plays the Mikado as a jovial giant turtle in a huge fat suit with his scrawny neck sticking out of an outsize collar. His dancing is a delight, as is the Busby Berkeley style dancing of the ensemble of bellboys, schoolgirls with lacrosse sticks and maids with feather dusters. Finally, I must mention Felicity Palmer's delicious performance as the scheming Katisha, despite being much too attractive to be completely convincing in the role.The sound quality is not brilliant. It sounds as though you are listening to a performance in your local scout hall. Visually the production is a bit fuzzy but probably state of the art for 1987 with on-stage hand-held cameras and some vignetting which other reviewers have found irritating. This is a triumph for Jonathan Miller but, if he was watching this broadcast last week, I'm sure he would have cringed at the sight of the Gentelemen from Japan making slitty-eyed gestures and karate-chop motions.

Yet another example of an English Opera production, recorded on an English stage and yet not being on sale in England, sorry, the UK. Presumably there are reasons beyond common sense but my message to the people who try to control our access to what we want to pay to see is that their restrictive actions are the very things that fuel the worldwide spread of regional code hacking and illegal copying and downloading. Anyway, if you are unfortunate enough to live in the UK and you try hard enough and you have a multi-region player then you can get a Region 1 DVD sent over from the USA. Not a great DVD, no subtitles for example. But better than nothing.The performances are excellent as other reviewers have already said. The sound is too on-mike in places, which gives the game away a bit; my guess is that what we see and hear is a gluing together of material shot at one or more real live performances with a lot of extra material re-shot without an audience.What makes this DVD poor is not what is happening on the stage but what is happening in the vision mixing department. Terrible camera directing; silly and contrived angles; poor transitions from closeups to wide shots; gimmicky and superfluous "multi-faceting lens" effects. If only it had been directed by a better director of televised operas (the excellent Brian Large springs to mind) then this would have been a wonderful record of a production that is still (2008) being staged in London. It is sad to think that when it eventually ceases to be performed the only video recording of it will be this visually flawed one.

There are times I am convinced that The Mikado is the best Sullivan & Gilbert opera ever, but that is only so long as I'm not listening to Iolanthe. Be that as it may, The Mikado is probably the most frequently filmed of the Savoy Operas. (Yes, I put the composer first. Nobody says Hammerstein and Rodgers, or Hart and Rodgers, or Boito and Verdi, or What's-His-Face and Strauss. You don't even hear the names of librettists for Offenbach, Suppe, or Balfe. Gilbert was just the bigger name (and the bigger ego) at the time, so they put his name first. It's time that silly practice was put to rest.Anyway, The Mikado is a compleat S&G operetta. It has some of Sullivan's catchiest numbers, combined with some of Gilbert's cleverest lyrics. It has an interesting book and sprightly dialogue. It's got a wonderful degree of craziness. And it leaves the door wide open for elaborate and whimsical costuming.This particular production, filmed in a live performance in 1990, turns its imagination toward striking simplicity. Set in a British seaside resort toward the end of the Art Nouveau period, it throws over the japonerie of the original entirely. The result is costuming and setting in an eye-caressing medley of whites, grey, and blacks, accented by occasional bits of red (and less frequent uses of yellow and green). It takes some getting used to, but it's really spiffy. Of course, when the chorus tells you they are gentlemen of Japan, you would be right to exclaim, "Oh, pooh. Bah!" (Did I just say that?) It's most gratifying that this fine production is now on DVD. However, one caveat: the print seems to be photographed through a glass of imperfect clarity, so that the expected sharpness of the image is softened and ever so slightly fuzzy. The tendency to superimpose images is, alas, annoying. Why do people who are doing a really spiffy production want to muck it up with artsy-fartsy stuff of that sort? But it's the performance that counts the most. We may skip the overture, since although one is performed, Sullivan never wrote one. (True, it may be so he wrote none for any of the Savoys. But the Mikado overture doesn't even date from Sullivan's lifetime and was compiled by observing the techniques used in the others.) As for the rest of the operetta, it's first-rate and supremely funny.The Ko-Ko here is the estimable Eric Idle, who does it credit. There is a tradition of bringing a Big Name into the role. The was a U.S. TV production years ago in which Ko-Ko was played by Groucho Marx with mixed results. Idle's performance is delightfully quirky ... he does "Taken from a county jail" assisted by a tennis racquet. His "I've Got a Little List" is done as a speech to a microphone -- of course it has the usual updated lyrics, which are much funnier than the usual run of such things, and his delivery is positively hysterical. It goes on that way throughout.In this operetta, it's important to have a good Katisha; it's just no fun if you're not being bellowed at in style. This Mikado has a fabulous Katisha in Felicity Palmer, in her way almost as Big a Name as Idle. She bellows with the best of them in a wonderful rich contralto ... wonderful, especially, for a soprano. And her costume...!!! (Not to mention her recital with Franz Liszt, apparently, accompanying.) Nanki-Poo is played by Bonaventura Bottone. I have trouble getting around is somewhat un-Nanki-Pooish chubby shortness -- but is voice is undeniably a solid, rich addition to the vocal palette. There is a nice touch during "A Wand'ring Minstrel", where the chorus reacts with distaste to the mention of "his nancy on his knee" -- bear in mind the Mikado's decree about flirting. Be that as it may, Bottone is a fine singing actor and if his appearance doesn't put the best face on Nanki-Poo, his performance does.Yum-Yum (Lesley Garett) and her friends are appropriately pretty and silly. She and Bottone do lovely duets. Pish-Tush (Mark Richardson) plays his persona as something a blageur and does it very well. Poo Bah (Richard Van Allan) is wonderful as a stuffed shirt out of water ... a role later done to death in American sitcoms (you know: haughty butlers forced to cater to bratty children -- that sort of thing). The Mikado (Richard Angas) is bloody marvelous, with an imperious voice at absolute variance with his ridiculous lyrics.I don't recommend you get this as your only Mikado. Get a good traditional production as well, so you can see what Gilbert intended (more or less) in terms of staging. That being said, I'll watch this one twice while viewing any traditional bit once. On the whole this is a terrific offering, a vocal and visual delight, with delicious over-acting. It's a DVD to treasure, with dervish-like maids, tap-dancing bellhops, and all. Watch for the bellhops with signs.