#rodgers has love me tonight — tremendous fun with maurice chevalier

[fabiansociety]

we have watched so many rodgers and hammerstein movie musicals in the last couple of years, and they're all… bad?

so, okay: most of them make an attempt to grapple with race and gender in ways that are progressive for the time, but they're all held down by aggressively mediocre songs and some truly egregious cinematic decisions. like, the king and i wouldn't be *good* if it starred actually thai actors instead of a bunch of white people in yellowface, but it would have been *less bad.* flower drum song *is* better that way… but you're still grappling with a tepid, threadbare plot and some real mid songs. the cast is doing everything they can, but it's still a loooooot of pidgin english, you know?

the sound of music is the only we've seen that works as a movie, but even then the parts that work are the ones that have the least to do with the music. it's cinematically gorgeous, and the last 30 minutes of sound of music is incredible, but you have to wade through 150 minutes of dull, treacly songs to get to the escape sequence, and it's just. not. worth. it.

i've gone in and added a bunch of sondheim musicals to our list just out of desperation, because for as bad as a little night music and into the woods are, man, at least the *songs* aren't the problem