Betty Hutton must not have been available when studio execs decided to make a screen adaptation of the Broadway musical, so they hired Debbie Reynolds instead and instructed her to act just like her.
Reynolds can be adorable, and what's more, she can be slyly and subtly funny. But in this, she overacts so grotesquely that she made me physically uncomfortable. The only reason she doesn't come off worse is that everyone around her is asked to pitch their performances to the same extreme level. The result is two and a half hours of mugging and grimacing and screeching, all to the service of a thin plot and weak songs.
There's one scene in this I really enjoyed, a dance number set in an Old West saloon. The rest I sat through to see what was so great about it that it earned six Oscar nominations in 1964. It played third string that year to two other enormously popular musicals, "My Fair Lady" and "Mary Poppins," but still managed to snag nominations for Best Actress (Reynolds -- never underestimate the Academy's ability to recognize career achievement by nominating someone for their worst performance), Best Color Art Direction, Best Color Cinematography, Best Color Costume Design, Best Scoring Adaptation, and Best Sound.
Grade: D+
Reynolds can be adorable, and what's more, she can be slyly and subtly funny. But in this, she overacts so grotesquely that she made me physically uncomfortable. The only reason she doesn't come off worse is that everyone around her is asked to pitch their performances to the same extreme level. The result is two and a half hours of mugging and grimacing and screeching, all to the service of a thin plot and weak songs.
There's one scene in this I really enjoyed, a dance number set in an Old West saloon. The rest I sat through to see what was so great about it that it earned six Oscar nominations in 1964. It played third string that year to two other enormously popular musicals, "My Fair Lady" and "Mary Poppins," but still managed to snag nominations for Best Actress (Reynolds -- never underestimate the Academy's ability to recognize career achievement by nominating someone for their worst performance), Best Color Art Direction, Best Color Cinematography, Best Color Costume Design, Best Scoring Adaptation, and Best Sound.
Grade: D+