Movie, music and TV reviews by Matt Neal, a Rotten Tomatoes-accredited ABC Radio film critic (also an author, musician, journalist and all-round okay guy).
Check out a far superior audio version of this review! I chat with Jono Pech about the film for his podcast Comedy Rewind.
(M) ★★★★
Director: Frank Oz
Cast: Matthew Macfadyen, Rupert Graves, Andy Nyman, Kris Marshall, Peter Dinklage, Keeley Hawes, Daisy Donovan, Alan Tudyk, Ewen Bremner, Peter Vaughan, Thomas Wheatley, Jane Asher, Peter Egan.
"Everyone stop what you're doing - it's time for the dancing girls."
It's a pretty good sign when your film is remade three times within three years of its release. Such is the excellence and translatability of the situations at the heart of Death At A Funeral, a wonderful ensemble comedy that doesn't get the dues it deserves.
The script's power lies partly in its brevity. Cut off the opening and end credits and it's barely 80 minutes. But within that hour-and-twenty there isn't a wasted second. Every character is set up with disarming ease, every catastrophe piles on top of the previous one in breathless fashion, and the gags come so thick and fast they have a better strike rate than Glenn Maxwell in a T20.
The titular funeral is the backdrop for sibling rivalry, money woes, disapproving in-laws, shunned suitors, hypochondriacs, grumpy old men, unintentional drug intake, posthumous secrets, and a spot of blackmail. There are so many opportunities for high-tension jokes that it's actually amazing it all fits into 80 minutes. The breakneck pace only adds to the comic timing.
The cast is uniformly excellent, though the standout is of course Alan Tudyk as the accidentally drug-addled Simon. He steals so many scenes he walks off with the whole movie. The performance is all the more masterful due to the American actor not only taking the escalating absurdity in his stride, but delivering it all in a note-perfect British accent.
Similarly impressive is Peter Dinklage, who has to portray an even more intense brain-frying trip, but with the added layers of being a secret lover in a delicate and somewhat heartbreaking situation. He and the script walk a fine line in keeping his character sympathetic, while also balancing the laughs.
There are some roles that feel underdone - Asher's grieving widow and Hawes' despairing wife are prime examples - but the humour derived from the lightning pace means these are sacrifices for the greater good. Credit goes to writer Dean Craig for his no-frills script, but also Frank Oz, who ensures the pace never flags. Oz seems to specialise in under-rated comedies like this - see also Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, In & Out and Bowfinger - but this may be the best of his funny films.
Some of it feels a little cliched now. How many comedies have a sweary old guy/accidental drug trip/disapproving mother-in-law, but these Old Reliables are delivered so perfectly it's of little concern. Death At A Funeral is a timeless comedy that's as funny now as it was when it was released.
You into that? Cool, you'll love the shit out of this. That doesn't float your boat? Walk away now. Go see Respect.
Obviously there's more to it than that, much like how Shang-Chi was created in 1972 to cash in on the growing popularity of Bruce Lee and shows like Kung Fu, but grew into being much more. This is ultimately a story of family, but not in the now-cliched Fast & Furious way. It's a bit more complicated than that (thankfully), but it does its source material and its cultural representation proud.
Simu Liu is Shaun, a San Francisco valet who spends his downtime getting drunk at karaoke bars with bestie/co-worker Katy (Awkwafina). One crazy bus fight later, and Shaun has to reveal his true identity - he is Shang Chi, the warrior son of an evil and immortal crimelord, and he's about to great drawn into a mystical battle for the ages.
For those that don't know, Shang Chi was created by Marvel to cash in on a trend in the '70s, but became a fully fledged and important character in the comic books, especially in the last 20 years. Now the "world's greatest martial artist" is on the big screen, and the film does a pretty good job of living up to that idea.
Unfortunately, the story of the first half of the film doesn't make a huge amount of sense, but it does allow for some cracking set-pieces. The bus fight (which would do Jackie Chan proud) , a gorgeous-looking wuxia battle in a mystical forest, and a punch-on dangling from high-rise scaffolding are awesome and far more impressive than the climactic special FX fest.
However, while the fights get less impactful, the story goes up a notch. This is largely thanks to Leung as Wenwu, Shang Chi's father. Wenwu is far from a cut-and-dried baddie. He does horrible things but is also hugely sympathetic, almost to the point where his reputation for evil seems disproportionate. The family ties and troubles between Wenwu and his children Shang Chi and Xialing (Zhang) are nicely balanced, upping the stakes as the film turns up the CG.
The idea that this will do for Asian representation what Black Panther did for African representation is noble and welcome. It's also well handled, and visually it makes for a stunningly beautiful film. Marvel is continuing to find new ways to explore old territory, and if nothing else, this feels and looks fresh because of its Asian spin.
As for its place in the MCU, there are some nice cameos, including a couple of very unexpected ones. One of these guest spots even tries to right some wrongs of Marvel and the MCU's past, which is, again, noble and welcome. Aside from this cameo, the film largely stands alone.
After the likes of Endgame and Infinity War, everything still feels like a bit of a let down, but Shang Chi is great fun if you don't try to measure it against those impossible benchmarks. It's action is superb, it looks wonderful, and Simu Liu is a revelation. Sure it has some wonky dialogue, the plot early on doesn't hold up to scrutiny, and the latter fights can't match the early ones, but the film is highly enjoyable, and Shang Chi is a very welcome addition to Marvel's mega-franchise.
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro, Barnard Hughes, Ruth White, Jennifer Salt, Bob Balaban.
The candidates for the new season of The Bachelor left something to be desired.
What is Midnight Cowboy really about, aside from being an unremittingly bleak tale about a naive gigolo and a sick grifter trying to make their way in New York?
Is it about the death of the American dream? Is it a profile of the American "underclass" circa the late '60s in the Big Apple? Or is it a portrait of true friendship and humanity in the face of depravity, destitution and ultimately death?
It is all of these things and more.
Amir Abou-Jaoude, reviewing it for its 50 anniversary in the Stanford Daily, called it "a seismic shift in the American imagination" that "attends to the grime and crime in New York City (and) compels us to pay attention to people who would ordinarily be overlooked". It also shoots down the great American archetype of the cowboy, with Abou-Jaoude gleefully noting Midnight Cowboy won the best film Oscar in the same year John Wayne won best actor for True Grit.
Indeed, there are no such Duke-like heroes here. The cowboy Joe Buck (Voight) heads east to New York in the hopes of finding rich women to fuck for money. From the moment he arrives, he is obviously a fish out of water, and very soon he's drowning - 40 minutes into the film, Joe is poor, broke, pale and looking to suck dick for chump change.
The idea of the cowboy being America, on a quest for the unholy double of sex and money, only to end up emasculated and destitute is too good a piece of symbolism to pass up. It's one of the best pieces of state-of-the-nation social commentary you could find.
Not everyone agreed (Roger Ebert called it "a good movie with a masterpiece inside, struggling to break free") but part of its legacy is its impact - it became the first "X-rated" film (that's NC-17 in today's language, or R in Australia) to win the Oscar for Best Film, beating Hello, Dolly! and Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid. That a mainstream film could deal so unflinchingly with street-level homosexuality and such powerfully "unpatriotic" symbolism at that time was a big deal.
It remains a tough watch, even 50 years on. I watched this during lockdown, and hoo boy, I would not recommend doing that. There are moments of genuine hilarity - Joe Buck's line "I only get car sick on boats" is gold for both its comedy and character value, while Rizzo's fantasy of what his life will be like in Florida is wonderful. The Warholesque party they both attend is a real trip and a nice diversion of false hope.
But for the most part, it's a downer. Flashback's into Joe's life pre-New York hint at a gang rape, institutionalisation of the mentally ill, and child abuse, while Rizzo's very existence is gut-wrenching, let alone his fate. The hard-hitting nature of it all is amplified by the brilliance of Voight and Hoffman, in what is one of cinema's great double acts. It takes mere seconds of each character being on screen to become absorbed and believe they're real people. Voight portrays Joe as cocksure yet desperate with ease right from the get-go, while Hoffman's Rizzo is instantly iconic.
This unlikely pairing gives the film its flicker of hope amid the darkness. Their fraternal dedication to each other is shown in strange ways - Rizzo lives in a condemned shithole, but is willing to share it, while Joe commits a horrible crime in order to help Rizzo achieve his dream of reaching Florida. Even if you don't buy into the movie's deconstructions of the American dream/image/masculinity, it's impossible to ignore the warped sweetness in its central bromance.
Much like Bonnie & Clyde a couple of years earlier, Midnight Cowboy melds French New Wave style with American subject matter (though critic Jonathan Rosenbaum initially dismissed it as "crassly derivative of the French New Wave"). UK director Schlesinger dives right into this modus operandi straight away, and uses sound, editing and camera moves in deliberately disorientating ways, whether it be in the flashbacks, or Joe's first NY sex encounter. The film is made to be unsettling in places, which also amplifies its savagery.
Midnight Cowboy tends to be remembered for a couple of key things. There's the iconic improvised "I'm walking here" line, the (overused) hit song Everybody's Talkin', the gorgeous theme song, and the imagery of the Joe-Rizzo odd couple strutting through the streets of New York.
Oddly, none of these things conjure the depth of the film, nor its symbolism or status as groundbreaker. They certainly don't capture the dark soul and bleak power of Midnight Cowboy.
So last year, while deep in the midst of lockdown, I stumbled across a long forgotten book on my bookshelf, which began taking up an inordinate amount of space in my brain.
This book, about a long-forgotten Australian alien abduction case from the '90s, formed the basis of an episode of my podcast, an article I wrote for the ABC, and a chat I had with an American podcast. So I thought I'd collate all these things together in one handy place.
The book is called Encounter and it's by Kelly Cahill. It documents her claims about her run-in with aliens - an event known in UFOlogy circles as the Eumemmering Creek encounter. For a while, it was heralded as the holy grail of UFO encounters because it purported to have numerous independent witnesses.
I compiled my research and interviews into this episode of my "hilarious yet informative" podcast, Can You Believe It?.
I also wrote it up in this article for the ABC, which is my most read article to date. People loved the shit out of it for reasons I can't quite explain.
As a result of all this, I was interviewed by the guys from Camp ReEducation, a cool American podcast, which was super fun.
Cast: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Michael J. Pollard, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Denver Pyle, Dub Taylor, Gene Wilder, Evans Evans.
"Could you please direct us to the nearest Bunnings?"
There is Hollywood before Bonnie & Clyde, and Hollywood after Bonnie & Clyde.
As Peter Biskind puts it in his salacious yet fascinating book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, "in 1967, two movies, Bonnie & Clyde and The Graduate, sent tremors through the industry".
These two films helped usher in the New Hollywood movement, which put power in the hands of directors like never before, providing a fertile creative field that yielded everything from The Godfather and Star Wars to Annie Hall and Taxi Driver. Bonnie & Clyde showed that the studios were clueless, audiences were restless, and revolution was necessary. The Swingin' '60s and the Summer Of Love blew the winds of change through politics, society, sex and music, and cinema was not going to escape those breezes unruffled.
Bonnie & Clyde, which mythologised the lives of Depression-era bankrobber Clyde Barrow (Beatty) and Bonnie Parker (Dunaway), was buried on release by Warner Bros in the US. They dumped it onto very few screens, largely in regional areas, and as a result it grossed just US$2.5 million in the five months of 1967 that it was in release. Unlike its protagonists, the movie died a quiet death in America, despite the murmurings of a new wave of critics led by Pauline Kael, calling its French influences, offbeat humour, tonal shifts, sharp editing, and jolting violence a revelation. But the old guard was having nothing of it - The New York Times' Bosley Crowther called it "a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick" and labelled Bonnie and Clyde a "sleazy, moronic pair".
Meanwhile in the UK, Bonnie & Clyde was killing it with critics and audiences alike. Dunaway's beret-toting Bonnie became a fashion icon, and the UK reviewers, perhaps by virtue of being closer to France and spotting the influence, acclaimed the film. By December, after the film had finished its American cinema run, Time had Dunaway on the front cover and was calling Bonnie & Clyde "film of the year", despite Time's reviewer having scorned the film months earlier.
The buzz grew around the film, leading to a couple of unprecedented things happening. Firstly, some critics recanted their negative reviews upon a repeated viewing and declared it a modern classic. And secondly, under threat of legal action from producer/star Beatty, Warner Bros put the movie back into cinemas - on the very day the film received 10 Oscar nominations coincidentally. In 1968, Bonnie & Clyde took in US$16.5m at the US box office - more than five times what it made in its initial release - and won two Oscars (Best Supporting Actress for Parsons and Best Cinematography for Burnett Guffey).
But more importantly, it was a watershed, stylistically and culturally. Taking advantage of the death of the old Hayes Production Code and inadvertently tapping into the zeitgeist, Bonnie & Clyde succeeded in "reversing the conventional moral polarities", Biskind wrote.
"The bad guys in the film were traditional authority figures: parents, sheriffs," Biskind said. "Bonnie & Clyde legitimised violence against the establishment, the same violence that seethed in the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands of frustrated opponents of the Vietnam War."
And then there's the "somewhat crude... message of sexual liberation" within the film. "Clyde's gun does what his dick can't, and when his dick can, there's nothing left for his gun to do, so he dies," wrote Biskind, calling it a pretty good example of the motto of the time: Make Love, Not War.
Adding into this was a flip of typical gender ideals - Bonnie wants sex, and the dashingly handsome Clyde can't deliver. This was downright ground-breaking at the time, and would still be considered unusual in a mainstream Hollywood movie now for the way it challenges the dramatic status quo. But further fueling the sexual fires was the fact that when Bonnie and Clyde finally consummate their relationship, they're gunned down by the authority figures. The puritanical society is frowning upon their sexual liberation in the most forceful way possible.
This liberating sex and shocking violence took place against a backdrop of excellent production design and a banjo-driven score that helped root the film in its era. It opens with real photos that eventually transition into pictures of Dunaway and Beatty in character - a neat subliminal trick to plant the audience in the 1930s. While the film would ultimately be criticised for its lack of historical veracity, audiences didn't care because it felt real. It certainly conjured the desperation and insanity of the Great Depression, which is to the credit of Penn and his production team.
It's all there in the script by David Newman and Robert Benton, even the French New Wave influences (they approached François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard to direct at various stages). While Robert Towne, Beatty and Penn all added their own twists, Newman and Benton's script (which was rejected all over Hollywood) had at its essence the anti-authoritarianism, overt sexuality, distinctive violence, and media sensationalism that made the film such a landmark, as well as the tonal shifts that helped make it so fresh, yet so French.
Penn's direction has also been rightly lauded, particularly for the way he balances the disparate parts. The film is brutal at times, yet oddly funny - Bonnie and Clyde's first attempts at robbing a bank are comedic, right up until Clyde shoots a pursuing bank manager in the face in an explosion of blood. It's desolately bleak in places, yet impossibly sexy in others, and Penn makes it all work.
It's not perfect though. There are awkward edits, moments of poor focus, terrible rear projection, shaky long zooms, and even a bit where a cameraman almost jumps out of the way during a car chase before holding his nerve. Yet elsewhere, Penn conjures up masterpieces - shots of Buck (Hackman), laying bleeding in the headlights, are reminiscent of renaissance paintings, while a final scene with Buck's wife Blanche (Parsons) is composed like Whistler's Mother. You could argue it's all part of the French New Wave's realism bleeding into the classic Americana of the piece.
Similarly contradictory are the characters, who are brought to life by a stellar cast. Parsons won the Oscar, Hackman is amazing, Wilder steals his scene like a true bank robber, but it's Dunaway who is the standout. She's magnetic in the opening scenes, toying with Clyde, comfortable in her own sexiness, yet desperate for his affection and willing to let Clyde control her. She's determined yet fragile. In a later scene when she reconnects with her family, you can see the realisation that she has no future wash over Dunaway's face and it's stunning.
In that same scene, Beatty plays Clyde like a dork, dying to impress. Elsewhere, he's a mixture of perfectly cool and idiotic man-child. Together, Beatty and Dunaway are perfect - a mess of fascinating contradictions, drawn together by some inexplicable magnetism that somehow totally makes sense.
R. Barton Palmer, writing in 1001 Movies You Must See..., describes Bonnie & Clyde as "a powerfully ambiguous statement about the place of violence and the individual in American society". It also has less ambiguous things to say about the media, the public, and their shared love of sensationalism, themes that would be updated and explored more fully in the debt-owing Natural Born Killers three decades later.
Bonnie & Clyde is a rare film, lauded as much for its entertainment value (it's great fun) as its stylistic virtues. Yet it's also something more - its historical importance as a signpost in Hollywood's evolution is just as significant. As Palmer put it, "the film's popular and critical success showed the Hollywood establishment, struggling to reconnect with its national audience, that pictures combining European stylisation and seriousness with traditional American themes could be successful".
"It says 'fuck you' not only to a generation of Americans who were on the wrong side of the generation gap, the wrong side of the war in Vietnam, but also a generation of Motion Picture Academy members that had hoped to go quietly, with dignity. Bonnie & Clyde was a movement movie; like The Graduate, young audiences recognised that it was 'theirs'."
Cast: Rob Schneider, Colleen Haskell, John C. McGinley, Guy Torry, Edward Asner, Michael Caton, Louis Lombardi.
That's gunna leave a stain.
Back in July 2001, I scored a full-time job at a newspaper. In between covering general news, weekend footy and the local music scene, I hinted to my editor that I wouldn't mind having a crack at movie reviews - a job the editor himself did.
Lo and behold, on September 6, 2001, my editor graciously allowed me to take his spot at the cinema for the week. I soon found out why - the new Rob Schneider movie was screening, and my editor obviously decided he couldn't be bothered with that shit.
Two days later - September 8 - my very first film review was published. I have no recollection of the movie whatsoever, which probably says more about my memory than the movie itself. Or both. Also, something kinda world-changing happened three days after my review was published, which takes up way more space in my brain than The Animal.
Anyway, here's the review. Let's see how it stacks up, 20 years on.
***
It's hard for a film to run on the strength of just one joke. The Animal, the latest vehicle for ex-Saturday Night Live regular Rob Schneider, tries to go the distance on it's man-acting-like-an-animal gag, but unfortunately the laughs wear thin early on into the film.
Clunky start but not too bad. "...the laughs wear thin quickly" would be a far more concise final clause of that paragraph.
Schneider plays Marvin Mange, a hopeless loser aiming to emulate his father by becoming a policeman, but constantly falling short through his own incompetence and inadequacies.
No quips about the dumb character name? Shame on me.
Marvin's life gets turned on its head when he is critically injured in a spectacular and mildly amusing car accident and is brought back to life thanks to the efforts of deranged scientist Dr Wilder (played by The Castle star Michael Caton).
The nutty doctor uses animal organs to rebuild Marvin, giving the wannabe cop the powers and skills necessary to gain him fame as a super-policeman, including a sense of smell that would put a sniffer dog to shame.
Of course, his animal instincts get a little out of control, and Marvin finds himself on the run, suspected of attacking a hunter and mauling two cows.
Throw in the compulsory love interest, an animal lover named Rianna (Survivor castaway Colleen Haskell in her big-screen debut) and you've got the makings of a light-hearted comedy, albeit a one-joke light-hearted comedy.
This is way too much plot summary and not enough review. I think I was given a whole page to fill, and boy, was I gonna fill it.
The Animal doesn't quite make the grade. While it has its moments, it walks a thin line between full-on gross out humour and Dumb & Dumber-style stupidity, only occasionally getting the laughs it's obviously aiming for.
Schneider, who co-wrote the script, is likeable as Marvin, but ultimately he's let down by his own screenplay. A few inspired sight gags and some memorable scenes, including one involving an angry mob, are actually funny. However, The Animal falls flat a lot of the time, occasionally bordering on tasteless, particularly one part of the film where Marvin finds himself sexually attracted to a goat.
This could all be said with far fewer words. But at last I'm starting to make my point. And it's not every day you get to write in the local paper about someone being sexually attracted to a goat. A horse on the other hand....
The script is particularly ordinary towards the end of the film, when everything gets wrapped up way too quickly, and rather stupidly, thanks to an unfunny running gag.
However the cast performances are fine and there are some interesting characters, particularly the hero's two best friends and the slightly insane Dr Wilder. Caton was asked to play the deranged scientist by Schneider and executive producer Adam Sandler after they saw his performance in The Castle.
What's with the out-of-nowhere factoid? This could have been dropped in there a lot better.
Haskell is also good as leading lady Rianna, well suited to the light-hearted nature of the film, though it will be interesting to see where her Survivor fame takes her.
Update: Haskell quit showbiz not long after this film.
The Animal's slightly undergraduate humour is sure to find an audience and no doubt there are people out there who would find it amusing to watch Rob Schneider hump a mailbox in a police uniform, but one joke doesn't make a comedy.
I suspect the word "slightly" is unnecessary in this par, though that sounds like my writing.
***
It's a pretty bland review that could be far tighter, but it's not as terrible as I'd expected. I'm surprised I didn't sink the boots into it, and having just watched the trailer, I suspect the film was utter shite but I was too afraid to slate it. Probably thought I had to keep my powder dry on my first outing. Hopefully I've improved. Thanks for joining me on this trip down memory lane.
Cast: Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Eleanor Parker, Richard Haydn, Peggy Wood, Charmian Carr, Nicholas Hammond, Heather Menzies, Duane Chase, Angela Cartwright, Debbie Turner, Kym Karath, Anna Lee, Portia Nelson, Ben Wright, Daniel Truhitte, Gil Stuart.
"Some of those that were enforcers, are the same that burn crosses..."
Christopher Plummer famously hated The Sound Of Music. Despite it being the movie that made him famous and the one that served as the main point of reference in his media obituaries earlier this year, he called it "so awful and sentimental and gooey" and "an albatross around my neck", preferring to title it "The Sound of Mucus".
Out of all the movies I've been watching and re-watching on this list, this was one of the films I was looking forward to the least. I hadn't seen it since I was 10, and, from where I sat, Plummer's assessment has been the prevailing wind as the film has blown down through the ages. Singing nuns, the annoying children, the impossibly cutesy songs - it seemed like three hours (!) of saccharine torture lay ahead. It's reputation is that of a movie loved only by old ladies and young children. "Cool" publications like Film didn't include it in their "definitive guide" to the top 100 films (c. 2006), while it was also absent from Empire's mammoth 2008 poll to create their Top 500 Films Of All Time list.
How pleasantly surprised I was. As noted in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, "it is all too easy to knock Robert Wise's enormously successful screen adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical hit". Yes, it's more twee than a Belle & Sebastian cover band and at least 20 minutes too long, but it's also one of the most beautifully filmed movies of its era, and not just because of those stunning mountain backdrops. For a musical, it's blessed with more hits than Ali vs Foreman, and melodically it's richer than Smaug. On top of all that, Julie Andrews and her remarkable voice sell every moment as Maria, while Plummer, despite his reticence over the role, is damned convincing in a surprisingly complex role. And there is an undertone of darkness and impending doom in the latter half that's oft-forgotten amid the raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.
It's the look of the thing that surprised me the most. Leaving the mountains aside, Wise's direction and Ted D McCord's cinematography are subtle yet stunning. Here are some key examples.
It's just a bunch of singing nuns, but the angle, the depth of field, and the lighting on this are superb. They appear almost bathed in a heavenly light, and we are literally looking up to them, implying a level of reverence that will later help humanise Maria.
Wonderful framing (not to mention the production design) - look at how small Maria seems, yet somehow the kids seem big and foreboding. Note all the muted colours too; this is early in the film, and hints at the lack of joy within the Von Trapp household.
Pretty much any shot in the gazebo is outstanding thanks to the use of magical backlighting. The shadows and light work in gorgeous ways in the two scenes set there.
These are just a few examples, and none of them feature mountains or sunshine, cos that feels like cheating. The film bursts with sunshine, and it's hard to make the Alps look shit.
Speaking of bursting with sunshine, let's talk about the music. There's an impossible amount of cheery melodies, all feeding into the notion that music is a metaphor for joy in the first half of the film. It's life-affirming - check out how I Have Confidence, My Favourite Things and the opening version of the title track are used. Music is banned in the Von Trapp house, and the grief of Captain Von Trapp makes him the "villain" of the opening hour, as he demands obedience and stifles fun. He shuts down the exuberance of My Favourite Things, and it's the children singing The Sound Of Music that ultimately melts his frozen heart, opening up the plot in the second half to love triangles and a family unified in the face of oncoming oppression.
But it's also more than just singing about hills being alive and schnitzel with noodles. When they sing Edelweiss at the end, it's an act of defiance similar to the singing of La Marseillaise in Casablanca. It's a beautifully powerful moment, worthy of being Hammerstein's final song (he died nine months after the stage production opened on Broadway).
By the way, Coltrane knew where it was at:
All these gorgeous melodies cloak the dark heart of the film. It's easy to forget that the key final scene of the film is set in a cemetery and involves a gun-toting Nazi willing to sell out his girlfriend for the Third Reich. Hitler's brewing storm looms over much of the film, not only bolstering Captain Von Trapp's transformation from antagonist to hero, but building a sense of family-friendly danger that makes the last half-hour genuinely exciting.
The latter half of the film also sees the sexual tension ramped up between Maria and the Captain. Interestingly, the film doesn't make the third side of the love triangle - the Baroness - out to be a villain, which it could have easily done. That it avoids the evil stepmother route is to be applauded, as it makes the Baroness a far more complicated and interesting character as a result. Parker's performance as the Baroness is also somewhat under-rated, but she helps make the role more layered and satisfying.
Of course, her performance is under-appreciated due to it being overshadowed by Plummer and Andrews, who are outstanding. As a couple they have real chemistry, but as adversaries the friction is just as satisfying. In a film that boasts the patriarchal ickyness of 16 Going On 17, Maria is a powerful woman willing to stand up to the Captain, yet deeply uncertain about her place in the world. Her character is best summed up by her first arrival at the Von Trapp mansion - the way Andrews skips down the lane, then has a momentary freak-out at the imposing site of the house behind its massive wrought-iron gates, before steeling herself once again is a thing of beauty.
Meanwhile, the Captain's transformation is believable and rewarding, thanks to Plummer being at home as both "grieving father who would rather be back in the military" and "loving parent, husband and patriot". The lip-synching work by he and secret singer Bill Lee is also excellent.
The film isn't quite perfect - I could happily lose the weird puppet show/Lonely Goatherd number, Something Good goes on too long, and as good a song as Climb Every Mountain is, it slows the pace of the film and feels out of place. But by the time you come to these songs, you're fully invested, and what lies ahead more than pays off in spite of the old One Song Too Many Syndrome that infects so many musicals.
It's very easy and, dare I say it, cool to turn your nose up at The Sound Of Music, "to dismiss the film for its blatant manipulation of sentiment", as critic Allan Hunter put it. "But to do so would be to ignore the considerable brilliance of both director (Wise) and performers, the staggering beautiful use of the Swiss scenery, the tuneful songs and the creation of an old-fashioned entertainment that cross all boundaries of age and nationality in its appeal."
Singing nuns and gun-toting Nazis - something for everyone.
