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 [Larger view] | The Happiest Millionaire
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Average user rating:  | |
 delightful Disney musical | |
| Fred MacMurray, Tommy Steele, Lesley Ann Warren and John Davidson star in the classic Disney musical THE HAPPIEST MILLIONAIRE, a delightful story centering on the Biddle family of Philadelphia. Cordy Biddle (Lesley Ann Warren) becomes engaged to Angie Duke (John Davidson). When this should be a happy occasion, Angie's snooty mother (Geraldine Page) still ensures that Angie hangs onto her apron strings. Cordy's mother (Greer Garson) tries to sort things out while Aunt Mary (Gladys Cooper) engages in some bitchy repartee with Mrs Duke! The entire production is flawless, and while Leonard Maltin has criticised this film for being too long, I think the time flies by. The Sherman brothers songs are strong throughout, and the supporting cast, including a very young Joyce Bulifant, are wonderful. Highly recommended. | |
 lavish disney production does not equal the sum of its parts | |
| THE HAPPIEST MILLIONAIRE is the last live production that Walt Disney oversaw before his death. The movie is an attempt to emulaite the big blockbuster reserved seat movie musicals popular following the SOUND OF MUSIC's success during 1960s and also to duplicate MARY POPPINS success. The production is lavish in terms of settings and costumes; with a great cast led by Fred MacMurray and Greer Garson; The songs by the Sherman brothers are likeable and not as bad as critics would have you believe; there are some great dance sequences. Unfortunatly, the plot is such a simple trifle which goes on and on for 164 minutes(in the restored version)that the movie eventually becomes a bloated, overlong bore. Its too bad because all the right ingrediants are there except a good story and script. The new DVD finally restores the movie to its original roadshow lenght. MILLIONAIRE was cut by 20 minutes following its premiere engagements.In fact the print which opened at Radio City Music Hall in NYC was already cut. The colors are excellent, the stero sound is good and the source materials are generally in good shape (a few markings here and there are not worth complaing about). This movie is now more a curiousity of its era and the wanning days of Disney's regime. It is certainly worth a look and may appeal to non-discriminating fans of musical movies. | |
| NOT THE HAPPIEST, BUT CERTAINLY THE MOST TYPICAL FROM DISNEY | |
| Walt Disney's was a visionary film pioneer; he took the fledgling craft of animation and transformed it into an art form of the highest order, and, in the process, altered our collective perception of what childhood is all about. However, occasionally that vision was marred by Disney's own lack of foresight into changing audience tastes. By the end of the 1950s the Walt Disney Studios had incurred huge expenses on Disney's foray into live action films, the birth of his theme park - Disneyland - and the lack luster box office response to his most recent and most expensive animated feature - Sleeping Beauty. Though the old master was set to recoup his losses, the sumptuously mounted, though often dismal, The Happiest Millionaire (released the year after Disney's death) was the personal and financial failure that rounded out Disney's tenure as the mogul of one of Hollywood's great cinema dream factories. Throughout the 1950s and 60s road show engagements for movies of distinction were quite common. Road shows were designed to elevate movies to the lofty ambitions of live theater. They usually began with a lush orchestrated prelude, included an intermission half way through, and exit music to escort audiences out of the theater after the final credit sequence. One often dressed up for this sort of premiere event, certainly paid extra to attend and was often provided with a printed program as a keep sake from the occasion. Disney had attempted the road show only once before, on Fantasia (1940) and the result had been an unqualified financial disaster. What a pity then, that The Happiest Millionaire - what should have been an eighty-minute tune-filled - if antiseptic and sexless - melodrama, is over inflated into a gargantuan three hours spectacle that, quite simply, fails to dazzle. The plot is a fictionalized account of real life circumstances that concern an eccentric Philadelphia millionaire, Anthony J. Drexel Biddle (Fred MacMurray). He runs a combination Bible and physical fitness college of sorts, loves boxing and keeps alligators in a solarium adjacent his dining room. When immigrant John Lawless (Tommy Steele) becomes Biddle's new butler he does indeed find his new surroundings rather odd. Not that Lawless isn't odd himself - it's just that, unlike Biddle's quirkiness, which can be grating to the point of distraction, Lawless becomes a genuinely loveable reprobate of congenial good humor, thanks to Tommy Steele's remarkable performance. The plot is thread bare to the point of nonexistent. It concerns Biddle's only daughter, Cordelia (Lesley Ann Warren). She's a sort of tomboy desperate to be feminine and sent off to a lady's finishing school where she meets and becomes engaged to New Yorker Angie Duke (John Davidson). Mrs. Duke (Geraldine Page) is social snob but Angie doesn't share her values. He wants to forgo the family business and build automobiles in Detroit. True to Disney form, everything does indeed work out in the end with Angie and Cordelia driving off toward an unintentionally apocalyptic matte painting that depicts the Motor City as something of a cross between Blade Runner and Mary Poppins, a glowering jungle of towering chimneys blackening the skies with the aftershocks of modernity. Of course, the plot - such as it is - would be largely forgivable if Disney's resident song writers, the Sherman Brothers had come up with a score worthy of their best endeavors. Tommy Steele opens the show with a bang with, Fortuosity, but the rest of the score does not live up to expectations and, in spots, is painfully sweet and cuddly. Valentine Candy or Boxing Gloves is so coy one wishes for the elegant Tommy Steele to burst into the room and tap dance its treacle into silence. All in all, Steele is remarkably well served by the score, belting out I'll Always Be Irish and several other songs with such austerity and charm that he easily dismisses the awkward lyrics. His choreography by Mark Breaux and Dee Dee Wood showcase Steele's finer points, particularly in the barroom number that closes the second half of the show. Unfortunately, there are no memorable showstoppers that leave one with a sudden urge to run out and buy the soundtrack or even leave the theater humming. THE TRANSFER: This re-released DVD of The Happiest Millionaire is about as dismal as the film itself. Everything's present: the Overture, Entr'acte and Exit music, but the transfer is not enhanced for widescreen televisions. Unlike the previously available DVD from Anchor Bay, colors seem somewhat more dated this time around and fine details breaks apart with a considerable amount of pixelization and edge enhancement, especially when viewed on a larger monitor. There are also several cases where mis-registration of the camera negative results in an excessively blurry print - something else absent on Anchor Bay's version. This DVD compresses the entire running time on one side of the disc, which I suspect is the biggest problem. There are no extras, not even the trailer. BOTTOM LINE: Get the Anchor Bay version instead! |
