SpecialsTarget Disturbing yet enthralling

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Keira Brennan The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Alasdair Orr Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

joelovesbabs Probably one of the most underrated musicals of all time (next to THE WIZ), it is a shame that this movie is labeled overblown and excessive, which it is NOT; it is lavish and elegant and larger-than-life.Barbra Streisand is as magnificent here as she is in FUNNY GIRL, and at least very deserving of an Oscar nomination for her splashy, vibrant and effortlessly spontaneous and vivacious performance.Gene Kelly not being nominated also for directing this classic is as much a travesty as Steven Spielberg not being nominated for directing the best film of 1985, THE COLOR PURPLE, then again, A.M.P.A.S has made many faux pas over its existence. Here's to you Dolly Levi, and Barbra Streisand, so glad to have you both where you belong, in such a beloved and highly admired musical film.

Bob Pr. This film was presented in a monthly film series (@ a society of retired university faculty & staff). Through the past year, to this point, all of our films have been interesting. We left half-way through this one at the intermission (thankfully, there was an intermission so my partner and I could compare our reactions and find they were similar).The acting seemed somewhat flat and without much spark or life (despite or because of dramatic gesticulations, voice inflections?). And the dance numbers seemed too long and extravagant and, rather than promoting vitality and interest, dampened ours.Maybe if we'd stayed to the conclusion, it would have fully redeemed itself?--but we saw nothing in the first 90 minutes to suggest such a promise would be fulfilled.We both agreed that Barbara Streisand seemed too young for the part she was playing while Walter Matthau, her love interest, looked as if he was going through the motions while playing a role he didn't really want to be in.I'm glad others enjoy it; different strokes for different folks.

dimplet It is hard to finish watching "Hello, Dolly!" without wanting to strangle director Gene Kelly, or at least sue him for malpractice. The acting is generally atrocious. I hope this won't hurt any of the actors' feelings, those still alive, because glimpses of competence sneak into their performances now and then, presumably when Kelly wasn't looking.The most outrageously bad performance is delivered by E.J. Peaker, who seems to be delivering her lines on Laugh In or the Grand 'Ole Opry. Several actors sometimes seem to have dubbed their lines in a studio. Tommy Tune would be lucky to pass a high school drama class with his wide-eyed, goofy performance. Even high schoolers wouldn't ham it up so much. The only relatively natural acting comes from Marianne McAndrew and Walter Matthau. I suspect Matthau wouldn't let Kelly push him into an exaggerated performance. He probably could see what was coming, that the over-acting would be the film's Achille's heel. We don't see the full Matthau edgy persona; he seems a bit distant. Matthew Crawford delivers the most amusing performance of the film. When this movie came out, everyone was shocked and disappointed that they weren't going to get to see Carol Channing play Dolly. Everyone in America knew the music, and many had the Broadway cast album, so Channing WAS Dolly. And everyone in America would have gone to see the movie if Channing were in it. Barbara Streisand, on the other hand, was too Sixties in most people's mind to work, and not Matthau's type. The Broadway production was an enormous success. I don't know why because I never saw it. There was the great music, some dancing, and the fantasy of traveling back 70 years to 1890s New York City. Fantasies don't need fancy sets; if anything, too much realism can interfere. And that's one of the mistakes this movie makes. The sumptuous sets are among the most amazing ever created for a movie, but were a total waste of money. Guys and Dolls was set in NYC, but many of the movie sets were painted backdrops, and little of it looked realistic, but that didn't stop it from being a great musical. Most musicals are that way, and for a reason: they are fantasies. Most of the acting was stylized Broadway performances, which clashed with such realistic sets, and just didn't fit a movie. Most of the performances and lines were rushed, which is a problem because the plot gets a bit complex in the beginning. Also, the scenes tend to shift without much connection or flow. It's as though this was a multi-track recorded movie, with each person delivering their performances separately in a sound studio, without any real interaction. There is ZERO chemistry between all of the performers. Early on, I thought to myself, they should have hired Ernest Lehman to write the script. So I checked, and, oops, they did! Lehman did the screen adaptation of The Sound of Music and wrote North by Northwest. He puts a lot of effort into his writing, so I have to believe this screenplay was as good an adaptation as you could get.So what went wrong? The directing. Some directors leave actors alone, for the most part, and some give them specific instructions. Kelly must have pushed them into these exaggerated performances, and, I suspect, pushed hard. If he had allowed them to use their judgment and let them interact, the movie would have been much better. I think Kelly had been a singer-dancer in too many mediocre musicals that he was told were masterpieces, like An American in Paris. So I think he came to believe that if you had lavish, colorful dance numbers and lots of good music the movie would be a big success. But several of the dance numbers are way over the top, as though he is trying to top Fred Astaire, and have little to do with the story. The dancing waiters during Hello Dolly remind me of the Mel Brooks parody, The Producers (the original with Zero Mostel), which was deliberately trying to be as tacky as possible. Kelly was a pretty good actor, but not great. I guess most of his acting was just being Gene Kelly; perhaps that's why he didn't really know how to direct actors. Just guessing.The bottom line is that a lot of individual elements of Hello, Dolly! are excellent, but the movie is less than the sum of it's part.== The story of Louis Armstrong's hit recording of the title tune is interesting. As I recall, he recorded it in one take, never having heard the tune before, in a studio as a favor. It was released after the Broadway show premiered while Armstrong was on tour, and to his puzzlement, suddenly everyone was requesting he perform Hello, Dolly!, a song he barely remember recording. No one imagined the song would be a hit, including Armstrong, except perhaps the composer. Armstrong re-recorded it in 1964, and, believe me, everyone heard that song on the radio a million times and was whistling the tune; it seemed they never got tired of it. Armstrong had a long career as the premiere jazz musician in America, as well as being a popular performer, but this one song brought him to the attention of a new generation and gave his career a second wind. It was not a sophisticated jazz performance, but I don't think Satchmo minded; he always seemed to want to make music his audience would enjoy.By the time the movie was finally released in 1969, the music had gotten a bit stale. The world had changed, and musical tastes had changed, too. I hope people today can forgive this movie its flaws so they can enjoy the delightful music.

elshikh4 Remember the 1960s ? Remember when skirts went up and hair come down ? Remember when all the girls were screaming for the Beatles ? Remember when things weren't just great... they were groovy. Well, if you do remember, this movie doesn't ! Back then the word classic was cursed. Some genre movies were smashed, as many many values in and out the screen. So it was obvious why one of the Veteran National Guards, (Gene Kelly), went to make the stage musical (The Matchmaker) into a feature film. I recall that Kelly, at the time, was fighting 20th-Century Fox for hiring a sexploitation director, (Russ Meyer), to make studio pictures. Actually those 2 deeds are one for an old Hollywood's Veteran National Guard.So, what's about this film ? It's big, so big. And that's, here, not great. Some scenes are too big, however not with great story, songs or actors. The story is a play on very old themes in the classic comic theater, but nothing did dazzle about it, and dealing with the characters wasn't creative. Except the title's song and (It Only Takes a Moment), the many songs aren't that excellent.The cast gave me such an awful time. First of all casting (Streisand) as (Dolly) is like casting (James Dean) to do an above 40 year old man in the last part of (The Giant), yet without make-up! That matchmaker is supposed to be a mix of a hag, spinster, and craving for love woman, while (Streisand) was craving for love only! And if we forgot that, how to forget the fact of (Streisand) being 26 year old, loving the 49 year old (Matthau) ? And if we forgot that either, how to forget the fact that there was absolutely no chemistry of any kind between (Streisand) and (Matthau) ?! I read that he didn't like her from day one, however according to his performance he looked pretty much hating what he was doing too. The younger actors weren't any better; I couldn't stand (Michael Crawford) in specific. Believe it or not, the cameo of (Louis Armstrong) not only stole the show, but proved that he was the most truly funny and rather bearable one in that cast !The humor is dry, no comedy were produced. And the dances were shot theatrically, where the bore must conquer. It's the waiters' dance where you can find some vitality and humor in this movie. Therefore with big sets, cadres, orchestra, costumes !, and big number of extras, the movie established a new level of bad, and the indistinct food was served in very huge and insanely expensive plate !Then, more dangerous problem. Its name is :1969. You know well that after 1968 everything had revolutionarily changed. It was the boom's start of anti-studio movies like (Midnight Cowboy) and (Easy Rider); where for instance after the success of the latter, Universal Studios hit upon the idea to let young filmmakers make "semi-independent" films with low budgets, no interfere in the filmmaking process, and giving the directors final cut, all in hopes of generating similar profits. It was a phase of breakthrough for some cinema, and breakdown of another. For many viewers that challenging and daring new wave made the conventional refused since it's conventional. Plus, movies like (Sweet Charity), (Paint Your Wagon), (Oh! What a Lovely War), all produced in 1969, didn't meet any high success. Regardless of being conventional musicals or not; as if being musical itself is what mattered; turning into something conventional enough back then. So what about the too conventional, too old Hollywood, (Hallo Dolly!)? Of course it wasn't an exception. Now you have to understand the reason why they put an exclamation mark after its title !It cost $25 million, to gross $13 million. And with other flops, 20th Century Fox nearly bankrupted, several top studio executives lost their jobs, and the studio produced only one picture for the entire calendar year of 1970. To a considerable extent the 1960s end passed that type of entertainment, over and above being "big" wasn't an answer for great or good, so while Kelly wanted to bang away, or – at worst – leave with a bang, he couldn't succeed in having a bang for the buck ! This is yesterday's train coming the day after. And among the golden age's musicals it is silly and overblown. So it couldn't be "groovy" by any meaning, but embodying the baroque phase of the Hollywood musicals, namely being heavily ornate and nearly soulless, which is natural to happen after the classic phase. Obviously the zenith is amusing, but the post-zenith isn't that amusing. …And (Elizabeth Taylor) was considered for the role of Dolly ?? AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH !!P.S : My first chapter, except its last line, is from the poster of (Stardust – 1974).