pierce-mn1

You start with a masterpiece, filmed over 100 years ago and then, rather than use the best elements from it, you ignore them, write a dreary script that's Sooo Slowww and avoid the best elements of the 1979 revision of the story and this is what you get! Like another writer on here, I, too, plan on watching Gary Oldman's performance in the Coppola film (which has its own set of problems) and the Herzog version which is far superior and much more bewitching than this dark waste of celluloid!

I really wanted to like this, but it was such a disappointment. Dafoe was far better in Shadow of the Vampire than in this thing!

I will argue about this movie forever. The big complaint is that Streisand is too young for the role of Dolly. She is not! If you keep in mind this is set in 1890, when life expectancy was 40, the idea of a young widow throwing herself at a 40-year-old half-a-millionaire makes sense. Matthau, in spite of the trouble he had with her, was the right actor at the time for the role of Vandergelder. The production is spectacular. Keep in mind that this cost $26 million. Fast forward to 1985. A Chorus Line cost $26 million. That was the budget for a movie that had no scenery, no costumes and no stars! Where did the money go? The following year, Little Shop of Horrors cost that much, but it's obvious where the money went.

I've seen Hello, Dolly! Onstage six times and with six different Dollys (from best to worst: Dorothy Lamour, Bette Midler, Betty Buckley, Carol Channing, Sally Struthers and a community theater actress) this is a sensational movie. If you see it from the point of view I've offered, I think you'll find this is quite a remarkable version of the stage musical!

Think what this movie could have been had it been done in the 1950s. The Contessa would have been a perfect role for Ethel Barrymore and the girl could have been a star-making role for Leslie Caron, Julie Andrews, Yvette Mimieux or Audrey Hepburn. The film shares elements with the Mademoiselle sequence in Minnelli's film The Story of Three Loves, but sadly, this movie doesn't deliver. It could be remade with someone like Rita Moreno or Ann Margret as the Contessa and Amanda Seifried as the girl. (Maybe she's too old for the role now). Minnelli's last film should have been terrific. It just isn't.