Funny Girl 1968
I watched Barbra Streisand in Hello, Dolly!, which I wasn’t impressed with, but in the extras they said she had just come off of this movie, Funny Girl for which she won an Oscar. So I wanted to see her first movie. And again, sadly, not that impressed. Streisand is a great talent, no doubt, one of the few to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. She is a wonderful singer with a sharp sense of humor, so this movie should really work. Unfortunately, there isn’t much of a story, other than sort of a fairy tale where she becomes a famous stage performer in the 1920’s, a headliner in Ziegfeld’s Follies, meets the man of her dreams, and becomes rich. But she isn’t really developed as a person and as events pull her and the man in her life (Omar Sharif) apart, she seems to forget she has a daughter? Streisand herself does fine in the movie, but it is mostly melodrama and the funny lines are usually just lame wisecracks. Sharif plays a professional gambler who doesn’t want to be tied down and very soon, Barbra is pushing marriage and wants to sit in on his poker games in a very hammy scene. That kind of lost me. There are some good songs and production numbers mostly taken from her career, but also in scenes with Omar Sharif, but the stuff in the theater doesn’t have much to do with the plot of the movie other than to show off her character’s talent. That isn’t to say it isn’t worth watching, but it wlll maybe appeal more to fans of romance novels given the weak plot and characters.
Written: 25 Oct 2021