Hello, Dolly! 1969
Recently, I rewatched Pixar’s WALL-E which features a couple of snippets of the 1969 musical, Hello, Dolly! and since that musical is also on Disney Plus, I decided I would try it out. It was a decidedly painful experience. I had actually seen a neighborhood production of this musical and it was decent enough, though the big song doesn’t happen until close to the end. It has been at least ten years since I saw that production, but it seems like the movie is much worse. The acting is generally terrible. Barbra Streisand had just become a hot Hollywood property (this was her second starring role, having won an Academy Award for her first role in Funny Girl). She has enough appeal to carry the role, but seems entirely too young to be playing a middle aged widow. Walter Matthau is also decent, but is mostly just grouchy, and more than 20 years older than Streisand. The relationship between the two is not remotely romantic: Streisand is clearly marrying him for his money, so it is really hard to care about whether they get together. Dolly is a matchmaker and schemer and comes up with a big plan to make everything work out in a climactic scene at the Hibernia Gardens restaurant, but not much happens there except for a big scene with waiters dancing that goes on absolutely endlessly. I don’t know for sure, but it seems like they added a couple of solos for Streisand. You could cut an hour from this movie and it would still be too long. In addition to the title song, there are a couple of decent songs (two of them featured in WALL-E, but even then really just those moments in the two songs). If you really love musicals, there could be some appeal here, but a lot of songs add nothing and even the choreography is very disappointing, especially given that Gene Kelly was the director. This movie lost money, unable to sell enough tickets to pay for the high production costs and is probably better forgotten.
Written: 23 Jul 2020