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If this
is your favorite movie, please scroll on down to the video/audio
section of the review. Okay, are we alone now? Good.
While watching
The Happiest Millionaire, I found myself wondering if this
was the movie that started the Disney Studios on the tailspin
from which they didn't fully recover until the advent of "The
Little Mermaid." Reportedly, this was the last film that Uncle
Walt oversaw himself. If that's true, he must've already had
one foot in the freezer when he did it. (Editor: Hey, that
was in bad taste! And very funny!)
The Happiest
Millionaire is like the old joke about dinner in a bad restaurant:
the food's bad, but there's lots of it. In Anchor Bay's new
release, you don't just get the movie, you get the "roadshow
version" of the movie: all two and half hours of it! Disney
seems to have been shooting for the old world family charm
of "Life With Father," only without the plot, or characterizations,
or the...well, charm. Instead they provided a full eighty
minutes of the most innocuous music ever perpetrated by the
Sherman Brothers.
The story
(if you can call it that) concerns a Philadelphia family called
the Biddles and their purportedly eccentric household. You
know they're eccentric because father keeps a pool of alligators
in the conservatory. The Philadelphia that the family inhabits
looks suspiciously like the London of "Mary Poppins," straight
down to the casting of Hermione Baddeley as the humorous cockney
maid. Their daughter wants to get engaged, but the family
is just too eccentric for any potential suitor (did I say
"Life with Father?" Make that "You Can't Take it With You,"
only without the...you know).
Into their
lives comes an Irish immigrant who is hired as their butler.
His sole purpose seems to be to look directly into the camera
and tell us how much fun we're having. He's played by Tommy
Steele, the British sensation who's career apparently took
a nose-dive once the rest of the world got wind of him. In
the opening scene he prances down the street in a hyper-kinetic
fashion that would get him arrested in any decent city in
America, and he spends the rest of the film mugging shamelessly
and flashing a mouthful of teeth so big and bright I would
gladly have knocked them out one by one with a ball peen hammer.
He's not
alone in the hijinks, however. Even though the film boasts
a cast that includes Fred McMurray, Greer Garson (GREER GARSON!),
and Geraldine Page, we are treated to a wealth of overacting
so pungent you can smell it from here.
The characters
occasionally mention the growing threat of World War in the
kind of off-handed way that may make you believe that somehow
the movie will all amount to something: like maybe the Biddles
will end up fleeing Austria with the help of some friendly,
singing nuns (they were talking about World War I, but I kept
hoping...). But no such luck.
In case
you think I'm being unduly harsh, and it can't be as bad as
all that, let me give you one example: Biddle (McMurray) has
three children: the daughter (Leslie Ann Warren), who figures
so prominently in the story, and two sons, played by Paul
Peterson (of The Donna Reed Show), and Eddie Hodges (apparently
Ronnie Howard was unavailable). The sons are trotted onto
the screen in at the beginning, do a song that probably embarrassed
even their mothers, and then are never seen, heard of, or
referred to again! Which I guess means they were luckier than
the rest of the cast. "Millionaire" also has the distinction
of having introduced John Davidson to the movie going public.
So I guess we have something else to hate Disney for. (Editor:
So, wait, did you like the movie or not?)
Video: How Does The Disc Look?
There are
some problems with the picture, but through no fault of Anchor
Bay - they licensed the film from Disney and were not allowed
to do a new transfer. The film is presented in its original
1.66:1 aspect ratio, and is not anamorphic (again, thank
Disney for that). And the print they were given to work with
has a good deal of blips, blotches and scratches, sometimes
to a distracting degree. Many sections of the film had that
"end of the reel" wear and tear look that you see in
the theater when the movie's been shown for a couple of weeks.
The picture overall was decent, but sometimes more like a
very good VHS tape or fair laserdisc than a DVD.
Audio: How Does the Disc Sound?
The audio
has some problems as well, I think mostly from the age of
the print. At times the dialogue level seemed to drop a bit,
though not so much that it was unhearable, then come back
up. At other times, after musical numbers, the dialogue level
also seemed to have gone down, but that could've just been
the effect of the music having been overly-pumped up. One
really unfortunate problem is that at times the music itself
it quite harsh, particularly the brasses during crescendos--and
there are many.
Supplements: What Goodies Are There? Aside
from the trailer and the 'uncut' version, which is an extra
in itself, there are no additional supplements. No English
or foreign subtitles are provided, nor alternate language
tracks.
Parting Thoughts
I haven't
seen the VHS tape of this film (and have no intention of it!),
but Disney has done some really decent tapes. I suppose given
the advantages of DVD this is probably the best transfer of
this film that has been released to date. But if I had the
tape, I'd think twice before buying the DVD. Then again, if
I had the tape I'd think twice about doing almost anything.
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