Funny Girl: I guess you had to be there

What a coincidence, WE find YOU boring.

How much velveted puce do you own R1?

Is is boring and the storyline is weak.

I knew I was a fledgling gayling when I got goosebumps at the end of the first act, where Babs is on the tug and singing "Don't Rain on My Parade."

It does fall apart in the second half.

It's actually much better than the stage version, which is a real slog.

I think it was a popular hit, not a critics' darling. "Oliver" got better reviews and more awards.

I want to like it, but it’s a total slog.

It's boring except for her.

You haters would hate this two hours of egomania even more if it didn't have William Wyler cracking the whip.

Wyler knew how to keep wayward egomaniacs under control.

I just saw it for the first time, too (it was on TCM). It was the perfect role for Barbra, who looked fabulous. It would have benefited enormously from a more realistic portrayal of Arnstein, who was always a gangster. That might have given it more of a “Love Me or Leave Me” feel.

Would have love to seen this in 1968, not yet having heard or seen Barbra before.

Girl meets boy, girl marries boy, girl loses boy. The only thing making it rise (high) above its trite plot was Barbra.

People had definitely seen and heard Barbra in 1968, r12, just not on the big screen.

[quote] Girl meets boy, girl marries boy, girl loses boy.

You forgot that the ugly woman has a son-in-law who insists on sanitises the slim plot down to almost nothing and leaves us with a plot resolution which doesn't resolve anything.

Saw this when I was 7. After the credits rolled, I wouldn't leave the theater and we stayed for the next showing.

It sucked.

[quote]It's actually much better than the stage version, which is a real slog.

Beanie's resurfaced.

The movie was not "the critics' darling."

While there was near-universal applause that Babs was what she was and would continue to be, since it was obvious no one could stop her, the movie also was called overwrought, imbalanced, overly slick in a naive way (as well as interesting, fine, and an attempt to break out of the theater/closed-set feeling). It was a bit much.

And Barbra was fully Barbra, which was off-putting or considered sexist to complain about. Director William Wyler was increasingly irritated by her intrusiveness and demands and complained about her.

A friend sad, "Bill, try to take it easy on her. After all, this is the first movie she's ever directed."

Over the years I've tried a few times to watch this film on commercial TV or TCM and it never held my interest. I've only seen bits and pieces of it. It was the number one box office film of 1968 and nominated for Best Picture while Rosemary's Baby, Faces and 2001 weren't nominees for BP!

from Time magazine

Otherwise, this extended Streisand Special has done absolutely nothing to correct the flaws in the Broadway original. This popcornball backstage biography of Fanny Brice still contains lines out of the Late Show: "You're no chorus girl, you're a singer." "I love to hear an audience applaud, but you can't take an audience home with you." "I can't go—not like this." As Nick Arnstein, Fanny's hard-luck gambler husband, Omar Sharif, of all people, is only required to stand and listen with large liquid eyes. The rest of the cast is simply a Jewish chorus of ooze and ahs mimicking Yiddish locution by ending declarative sentences with a question mark. ("He has polish on his nails?")

It certainly is no FOLLIES, that's for sure.

I love this movie from beginning to end.

Except the Swan Lake parody. Which should have been one of those deleted scenes on the DVD that is included as an extra and you can see why it was deleted.

It was just to add a little more essence of Fanny, r23?

There are many people who cannot stand Streisand, and her diehard fans simply do not understand this.

They think that people are willfully [italic]choosing[/italic] to dislike her in order to be wicked, just like the Christian fundamentalists seem to believe gay men choose to be gay out of sheer wickedness.

Sure, Jan.

Funny Girl was a big hit movie musical that even straight men went to see. Probably brought by their wives and girlfriends but because it was such a phenomenon they went willingly to see what the fuss was about. And in the 70s What's Up Doc, The Way We Were and A Star is Born were huge with men and women. Not bad.

Sure, Jan.

[Quote] And in the 70s What's Up Doc, The Way We Were and A Star is Born were huge with men and women. Not bad.

and yet all those movies sucked.

A Star is Born was the beginning of the end for her as an “actress”. From that moment on she was all about image control.

"Funny Girl" came toward the end of the heyday of the "Roadshow" release of major films. The last one -- and it pretty much killed the concept -- was the HUGE ("I never miss a Liv Ullmann musical) flop "Lost Horizon" in 1973.

I have fond memories of being taken to the "big theater" in San Francisco to see roadshow movies like "The Music Man" and "Funny Girl" weeks or months before they went into wide release and played in smaller theaters in towns and suburbs.

She bears zero resemblance to Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, and she doesn't even try to imitate Brice's voice. It's the Barbra Streisand story.

Funny Lady plays much closer to who Brice was, and it's one of Streisand's best performances.

They weren't going to cast a Fanny imitator for the show, r32.

Did Fanny Brice always talk in that Yiddish accent?

I saw Lost Horizon at Loew's State in Times Square. I wanted so much to love it but boy was it god-awful. It does seem to be a cult favorite though selling out its Twilight Time bluray edition. I do have to admit a youtube guilty pleasure is Sally Kellerman and Olivia Hussey singing The Things I Will Not Miss. Song starts at 2 minute mark. I've grown to like the song itself.

None of the performers who have played Brice really captured her essence. Streisand was too glamorous, Beanie too girlish and Leah too pretty. She was more like a Jewish Gracie Allen.

My mother wasn't a nut!

I found myself expecting Tevye to appear and accompany her on his fiddle.

I prefer Funny Lady. Barbra didn't want to make it and it shows but somehow it works for older, slightly bitter Fanny. James Caan and Roddy McDowall are great and I love the Kander and Ebb score. How lucky can you get?

When did Tevya ever have a fiddle? Was this in Detroit?

Off topic: Omar was a Melkite Catholic Lebanese ethnicity Egyptian. Melkite is a "Greek" eastern Catholic church but now based in Syria. He converted to Islam when he fell in love with a muslim actress. He was very elegant, quite rich, very intelligent and well educated. He was very handsome in those Egyptian movies he made before he became and international star. He made a very dream Julius Wilford "Nicky" Arnstein, who was NEVER that suave and fabulous. I would have liked to see Bobby Cannavale as Nicky in the aborted revival a decade ago.

a very dreamY

Don't forget Jr.

[quote]I prefer Funny Lady. Barbra didn't want to make it

It was a sequel! SHE WAS UNDER CONTRACT!

I have a friend who has two cenotaph plaques at Westwood Cemetery, most famous for Marilyn. However, while her crypt is within eyeline of his, the closest celebrity are the entombed ashes of Fanny Brice in the column of the Stark family plot. The saleswoman who sold that $400,000 piece of property in the late 90s made a hefty $40,000 commission on the sale.