Rating: 
Summary: NOT THE HAPPIEST, BUT CERTAINLY THE MOST TYPICAL FROM DISNEY
Review: Walt Disney's was a visionary film pioneer; he took the fledgling craft of animation and transformed it into an art form of the highest order, and, in the process, altered our collective perception of what childhood is all about. However, occasionally that vision was marred by Disney's own lack of foresight into changing audience tastes. By the end of the 1950s the Walt Disney Studios had incurred huge expenses on Disney's foray into live action films, the birth of his theme park - Disneyland - and the lack luster box office response to his most recent and most expensive animated feature - Sleeping Beauty. Though the old master was set to recoup his losses, the sumptuously mounted, though often dismal, The Happiest Millionaire (released the year after Disney's death) was the personal and financial failure that rounded out Disney's tenure as the mogul of one of Hollywood's great cinema dream factories.
Throughout the 1950s and 60s road show engagements for movies of distinction were quite common. Road shows were designed to elevate movies to the lofty ambitions of live theater. They usually began with a lush orchestrated prelude, included an intermission half way through, and exit music to escort audiences out of the theater after the final credit sequence. One often dressed up for this sort of premiere event, certainly paid extra to attend and was often provided with a printed program as a keep sake from the occasion. Disney had attempted the road show only once before, on Fantasia (1940) and the result had been an unqualified financial disaster. What a pity then, that The Happiest Millionaire - what should have been an eighty-minute tune-filled - if antiseptic and sexless - melodrama, is over inflated into a gargantuan three hours spectacle that, quite simply, fails to dazzle. The plot is a fictionalized account of real life circumstances that concern an eccentric Philadelphia millionaire, Anthony J. Drexel Biddle (Fred MacMurray). He runs a combination Bible and physical fitness college of sorts, loves boxing and keeps alligators in a solarium adjacent his dining room. When immigrant John Lawless (Tommy Steele) becomes Biddle's new butler he does indeed find his new surroundings rather odd. Not that Lawless isn't odd himself - it's just that, unlike Biddle's quirkiness, which can be grating to the point of distraction, Lawless becomes a genuinely loveable reprobate of congenial good humor, thanks to Tommy Steele's remarkable performance. The plot is thread bare to the point of nonexistent. It concerns Biddle's only daughter, Cordelia (Lesley Ann Warren). She's a sort of tomboy desperate to be feminine and sent off to a lady's finishing school where she meets and becomes engaged to New Yorker Angie Duke (John Davidson). Mrs. Duke (Geraldine Page) is social snob but Angie doesn't share her values. He wants to forgo the family business and build automobiles in Detroit. True to Disney form, everything does indeed work out in the end with Angie and Cordelia driving off toward an unintentionally apocalyptic matte painting that depicts the Motor City as something of a cross between Blade Runner and Mary Poppins, a glowering jungle of towering chimneys blackening the skies with the aftershocks of modernity.
Plot construction is problematic; As Cordelia's mother, Greer Garson is given extremely little to do. One of Disney's good luck charms - Hemione Baddeley has even less of a say. Equally curious is the fact that after the film takes great pains to introduce the Biddle two sons Tony and Livingston (Paul Petersen and Eddie Hodges) - even giving them a song - it suddenly loses interest in their character development by sending them off to school where, as an audience, we forget that they ever existed. Of course, the plot - such as it is - would be largely forgivable if Disney's resident song writers, the Sherman Brothers had come up with a score worthy of their best endeavors. Tommy Steele opens the show with a bang with, Fortuosity, but the rest of the score does not live up to expectations and, in spots, is painfully sweet and cuddly. Valentine Candy or Boxing Gloves is so coy one wishes for the elegant Tommy Steele to burst into the room and tap dance its treacle into silence. All in all, Steele is remarkably well served by the score, belting out I'll Always Be Irish and several other songs with such austerity and charm that he easily dismisses the awkward lyrics. His choreography by Mark Breaux and Dee Dee Wood showcase Steele's finer points, particularly in the barroom number that closes the second half of the show. Unfortunately, there are no memorable showstoppers that leave one with a sudden urge to run out and buy the soundtrack or even leave the theater humming. THE TRANSFER: This re-released DVD of The Happiest Millionaire is about as dismal as the film itself. Everything's present: the Overture, Entr'acte and Exit music, but the transfer is not enhanced for widescreen televisions. Unlike the previously available DVD from Anchor Bay, colors seem somewhat more dated this time around and fine details breaks apart with a considerable amount of pixelization and edge enhancement, especially when viewed on a larger monitor. There are also several cases where mis-registration of the camera negative results in an excessively blurry print - something else absent on Anchor Bay's version. This DVD compresses the entire running time on one side of the disc, which I suspect is the biggest problem. There are no extras, not even the trailer. BOTTOM LINE: Get the Anchor Bay version instead!
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful Family Film
Review: This film has been MY favorite since third grade (I'm 27). It is wonderfully fun and uplifting with Great singing and dancing. In a world where cartoons can scare kids, my three-year-old loves this film. It may be long, but with all the songs, it makes for a fast watch. Also the story is simple enough that children can turn it off one day and watch more the next.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Family Film
Review: This film has been MY favorite since third grade (I'm 27). It is wonderfully fun and uplifting with Great singing and dancing. In a world where cartoons can scare kids, my three-year-old loves this film. It may be long, but with all the songs, it makes for a fast watch. Also the story is simple enough that children can turn it off one day and watch more the next.
Rating:
Summary: An Unusual Find
Review: How often do you find a millionaire that is actually happy? Well, Fred MacMurray shows that if you can be yourself, regardless of your money, then you can be happy.
I watched this movie as a child, but haven't seen it for years. I was so thrilled to rediscover it here, and be able to buy it for my little girl. As the first scene began, I found myself singing along to songs that I didn't know I remembered.
If you want to introduce your young children (the younger the better) to some old classic musicals, you should start with this one (and Mary Poppins). The wit and charm of these old classic movies is definately lacking in todays world of film.
All in all, this movie is hilarious, well cast, well written, and fun.
Rating:
Summary: Geraldine Page Leaves an Indelible Impression
Review: In her eighth film (there were also two TV movies mixed in there) Geraldine Page plays a slightly unusual character for her, for in this show she plays the mother of John Davidson and when she hears about his growing attraction for Cordelia (the effervescent Lesley Ann Warren from TV's CINDERELLA) Page gets on the warpath. You don't see her playing the "mother in law battle axe" role often, but she brings a different shading to it, perhaps from all her years in the famed Actors Studio in New York, which used to be a real school long before the wretched James Lipton got hold of it and turned it into a combination fund-raising resource and personality parade.
This was Geraldine Page's first film project following her appearance (also taped and still available) in Chekhov's THE THREE SISTERS, with Kim Stanley and Sandy Dennis, and some of the tried and true Chekhovian sadness and melancholy poke through her trimmings as Mrs Duke, an aristocrat of the same period as Chekhov was writing about. She stands out even in a cast of brilliant actors that includes Tommy Steele, Fred McMurray, Greer Garson, and Gladys Cooper, all of them putting their best foot forward, a little intimidated no doubt by a) co-starring in a Geraldine Page movie and b) laboring away under the personal supervision of Mr. Walt Disney, whose very last movie this is. A master of unconventional casting, Disney personally selected Geraldine Page for the role after rejecting fifty other actresses.
Rating:
Summary: Best Musical Ever!!
Review: This is my favorite movie of all time! I used to rent it over and over when I was in high school. I love the music, the story, the characters, everything. It is funny and wonderful! I loved the fact that Cordelia never could make it past a first date, because she always "knocked out" literally, all of her dates! The alligators and the butler from Ireland make for some hilarious scenes also. Don't wait, get the DVD. You'll love it!!
Rating:
Summary: We love OLD Disney.
Review: My only criticism of the DVD version of this is that they edited out some of it. I'm used to seeing it with all the movie and it aggravated me that some of it was cut. But it is a very long movie (aren't all musicals?) so that may be why. The story is based on fact (exactly how close it comes I don't know!)and concerns a millionaire who is, to say the least, quite eccentric. He runs off servants constantly, but manages to hire as his butler John Lawless from Ireland, who fits in perfectly. McMurray, who plays the millionaire who hates change, was perfect in this part, as he fights sending his daughter off to finishing school and then fights even harder when she gets engaged. John Davidson plays the fiance (I think this might have been his first big screen role)and is both good-looking and likeable. The songs are good & some scenes are memorable indeed, like the high-class duel-of-words between Aunt Mary and Mrs. Duke or the hangover scene when they go to get Angie (Davidson) out of jail. Perhaps most memorable of all is the scene where the alligators have thawed out and the maid finds them -- don't ask, just watch the movie. A very enjoyable musical.
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