You have to watch it (or the equivalent of "skim" it like we did, skipping the musical numbers) at least once because it's based on Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew and so many other things refer to it. It has a lot of songs you've heard or heard referenced before.
Family Guy: 5
Eliza Doolittle! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXeAzO0yIf4
Relevance:
Strike 1: Musical
Strike 2: 2 hours and 50 minutes which means an intermission
Strike 3: Difficult to understand because of the poor film quality and cockney dialects but subtitles are only available in Portugese.Higgins is a jackass the entire time. There is nothing good about the fact that he treats Eliza like crap and yet she returns to him even though a young, nice man who worships her offers his love instead. Just as "Baby It's Cold Outside" implies date rape, this film implies domestic abuse. It's sad then and now.
On the other hand, we HATE musicals. We don't expect a film to break at twenty minutes in to tap dance or perform mime so we really don't like the idea of taking a plot and adding pointless music to it, either. This movie's likeability is not helped by that fact nor the two leading gay gentlemen who take Eliza in as a "project." Audrey Hepburn is wonderful but even her innate charisma is cheapened and turned into an unlikeable character in this film.
Better, more entertaining viewing suggestions include Pretty Woman and 10 Things I Hate about You.
As we publish this post, the movie is still playing on mute solely because we feel obligated to finish it for this project.
Skip it and listen to:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyyuuczALoI and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6Y2VyEzdf4
and watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7fCXvInjmg
What? I love My Fair Lady! Rex Harrison is brilliant and Audrey is exquisite.
ReplyDeleteHowever...since you are not a fan of musicals I must recommend Pygmalion starring Leslie Howard as Dr. Higgins and Dame Wendy Hiller as Eliza.
No music, and closer to the play than the musical. An old classic. Worth watching! :)
Your criticism of Henry Higgins is right on and, as you suggest, viewers are not likely to believe that upon transforming Eliza he is not only straight but in love. Rex Harrison is a bad choice for a romantic lead and a singer. But you can't just dismiss the whole genre of musicals. Don't you like Wizard of Oz? What about Spamalot? The Music Man, Oliver!, Singing in the Rain? The Producers is actually better as a musical than the original movie. There are plenty of bad musicals - if the songs aren't engaging on their own, it's going to be bad. But My Fair Lady has some great songs - that's why we recognize them - they should have had a different leading man singing them.
ReplyDeleteSure we can, John--it's OUR blog! Just like we can say we hate 60's/70's music as an entire genre. There may be exceptions but as a whole we hate this entire type of movie and haven't seen several of the ones you mention because of that.
ReplyDeleteThe problem so far with this list is that it is alludes to being the greatest movies of all time (according to AFI's claim on their website about Citizen Kane: http://www.afi.com/100years/movies10.aspx) and the fact that this film gave us memorable songs doesn't make it great as a whole. It may deserve a place on a list of musicals but it is a sad homage to Shakespeare's original play and shouldn't be considered because of those glaring errors.