Funny Girl (1968):
Synopsis – She wants to be a star, so she does that. And
apparently she’s ugly? I mean, she’s not conventionally beautiful, but ugly?
C’mon. Well, anyway, she gets by on her self-deprecating sense of humor and her
denial of rejection in all its forms.
Movie #4 in the March
movie project, I asked my mom what makes Funny Girl special to her:
“I love the ugly duckling makes good story. I memorized
every song. Barbra Streisand became a hero to me.”
“I hated her in Hello Dolly though.”
I just added that last part in on a whim, I don’t know if
she wanted me to. My mom is a funny lady, which happens to be the sequel to Funny
Girl, but also a fact. I really doubt she was ever the ugly duckling. I’m
biased, I know, but my mom has always been a beautiful woman, and she was even
in some musical productions (not to mention a band or two). I can’t imagine her
ever comparing herself to Fanny Brice from this movie, but perhaps that’s
something everyone does. Funny Girl is the most completely acceptable
musical I have seen on film in a long time. By which I mean I didn’t have an
issue with any part of the story or music. And you know why it works for me?
The sense of humor, it gets me every time. I like self-deprecating humor, I use
it a lot myself, so with Streisand throwing out all the “who me?” type jokes, I
was bound to enjoy everything she said. I can understand why it would be a turn
off for some people though. It gets tiresome when you know someone like that in
real life. And Streisand now has a reputation as a diva so maybe the jokes
would come off false to the average viewer. But she was a practically a nobody
when this movie was made. There is an innocence of character that is right
there on the screen, and I appreciate that.
What I Liked:
-Barbra Streisand is funny. I know at this point of pop
culture history Streisand is considered a joke or not all most of the time, but
she shows some serious chops in this movie. Every joke she throws out lands
smoothly and her expressions are all perfect for each situation. I don’t know
if she was just reading from a script, but it felt perfectly natural for her.
-It was good to hear these songs in context to the movies. I
think I had heard most of them before, once again usually poking fun at Barbra
Streisand, and until now they hadn’t really had in impact on me. Don’t Rain on My Parade always seemed
like a weird and defensive song, but in the context of this film it is quite
good.
-It looks like this was an adaptation of the stage
production of the same name. If that is the case, then this is how you do that.
One of my complaints about My Fair Lady was how stagnant all the
environments felt because they seem to have built a bunch of sets directly
based off of the play, making it feel unnatural, unlived in. Funny Girl
doesn’t have that problem at all. Everything feels real and lived in and still
manages to work in a musical.
What I Didn’t Like:
-Well, since this story is semi-based on someone’s real
life, I guess faulting the story feels a little hollow. But that ending is
really against the tone of the rest of the movie.
What I Hated:
-Nothing
Verdict:
A good and funny musical with a downer ending, this is now
another movie I long to see projected. A nice way to spend a few hours.
No comments:
Post a Comment