Rating: 
Summary: 'Star"better than ever on DVD
Review: "Star" is a movie that suffered at the hands of distributors in the late sixties. Released as a supremo roadshow attraction on the back of the success of "The Sound of Music", it was marketed to the wrong market at a time when movie musicals were on the way out. Consequently it was badly hacked about, re released in shorter retitled versions and , (even though in Australia it has always been readily available on video,) it seems in the States it took years for the film to be 'discovered" again in a video release. Regardless , this new DVD pristine print of the movie is a joy to behold and goes a long way to establishing the movie as one of the great Hollywood musicals and will help further in establishing a large and passionate fan base for the film. The DVD is narrated by director Robert Wise, but with numerous other cast members(some recently and sadly deceased) popping in to give their memories of the film, including Ms Andrews herself. The print is gloriously restored, the accompanying special features include a featurette with rare "on the set" shots and an update from the video release in 1993 when several of the actors attended a revival release of the movie in cinemas. This is DVD exploring and giving extraordinary information and using the form at its best. The accompanying "Saga of Star" which in text form takes readers into the creation, production and the appaling distribution of the film and the horrific hacking of it after its initial release (including shots of some amazingly bad lobby cards) is truly a fascinating excursion into Hollywood at a time of great transition when some diabolical decisions were made .
Now the film can be seen in its glorious, original, unedited form and in a DVD release packed with information that will help gain this movie its rightful place high on the list of the best movie musicals ever made.
Footnote" This is also, arguably Julie Andrews' best movie role and if had been seen by a wider audience would have
stopped the hiatus that followed in her career for so many years afterward and also killed off the "goody two shoes"image that was so wrongly attributed to her for so many years.
Rating: 
Summary: Like a model airplane lost in a full-sized airplane hanger
Review: After directing "West Side Story", Robert Wise made one small (and pretty good, "Two for the Seesaw") movie, and then a string of pictures where the story was rattling around in a huge production like a model airplane inside full-sized airplane hanger. "The Haunting", "The Sound of Music", "The Sand Pebbles", "Star", "The Andromeda Strain", and eventually the tiniest story of them all, "Star Trek: The Motion Picture". "Star" wasn't so much a disaster (except for the studio) as it was a clunker. Here Julie Andrews is trying as she did in "The Americanization of Emily" to play against her Mary Poppins image. She's good; too bad the picture wasn't better. As far as playing against her image, a cruel joke occurred when Twentieth Century-Fox re-cut the picture, and released it unsuccessfully as "Those Were the Happy Times" with an ad campaign someone called "Son of Sound of Music", pointing out that the studio "didn't have the courage of its confections". Gosh, I wish I'd said that!
Rating:
Summary: Great - but where's the entire film?
Review: I was a fan of Star when I first saw it in 1968. I was a fan when I purchased the Laser Disk in 2000. When I purchased the DVD, I was very happy with the quality of the disk until the Intermission Break and Entr'acte Music, both are missing from the DVD disk. There is a pause where these items should be and then a slight bleeping noise and then the film continues. A small thing, but they are a part of the original film. The film makers' intentions have been altered. The Laser Disk clocks in at 176 minutes (with Intermission and Entr'acte Music) and the DVD at 172 minutes. Are the 4 minutes missing because the DVD was not released on 2 disks and therefore ran out of space? Was there carelessness in the transfer? What is the answer?
For this important film (minor but important), I feel that Twentieth Century Fox Home Video skimped with this product. Doesn't this film warrant a deluxe packaging? Yes, the second side of the DVD disk has all the special material from the Laser Disk but side 1 does not have the entire film. The product is unbalanced. The complete film should have been preserved on DVD for future generations. Hopefully it will be released by a vender such as Criterion which seems to have more integrity with their products then the producers of this imperfect disk.
Rating:
Summary: Great DVD
Review: Julie Andrews gives a really risky and full performance. The transfer is really beautiful and the sound is great in 5.0 surround. The movie is very long, and many would say overproduced, but enough about what has already been said about it for the last 35 years. This is a great show of Ms. Andrews' talents with many many huge production numbers. Among my favorites are "Burlington Bertie", "My Ship", "The Saga of Jenny" and "Limehouse Blues". Michael Kidd did great work, with Julie really putting out in dance numbers. A perfect addition to a film library...the big numbers are all right there to be seen in the best possible way. Bravo, Julie!
Rating: 
Summary: A smart, intelligent picture
Review: This is a terrific DVD of an unfairly maligned and underrated picture. However, as good as it is, I can see why it was not commerically successful upon it's inital roadshow engagements in 1968. In many ways, it was just too good to be popular. Despite its many musical numbers, Star is not a musical in the traditional sense (think Helen Morgan in Applause and Judy Garland in A Star is Born). Also: British music hall variety doesn't cross the Atlantic well and I suspect that may have been a factor limiting its appeal in North America. The flip-side of this disk provides extensive and fascinating details of the production itself, including the desperate attempts by 20th Century Fox to recut, repackage and reposition the film to find a larger audience: it didn't work. Nonetheless, Star is a substantial accomplishment and Julie Andrew's demonstrates once again what a remarkably gifted and talented performer she is...just like Gertrude Lawrence!
Rating:
Summary: STILL A FOOTNOTE TO JULIE ANDREWS' CAREER
Review: "Star" is the musicalization of the often "more-colorful-than-reality" life and times of stage sensation, Gertrude Lawrence. In the "star" role we have Julie Andrews, practically perfect heroine of two of the greatest film musicals ever produced - "Mary Poppins" and "The Sound of Music". To executives over at Fox Ms. Andrews must have seemed like "the sure thing" times ten and guaranteed box office dynamite to boot. Unfortunately, for all concerned "Star" was an unqualified disaster. Only part of the reason for this misfire can be blamed on changing tastes in theater goers. The bulk must continue to rest on the fact that "Star" is a thoroughly misguided hodge-podge of dramatic snippets and overblown musical numbers that are more heavy on cash flow and props than artistry and elegance. One, "The Saga of Jenny", amiably sung by Andrews, is painfully garish to watch as Andrews, sheathed in a body hugging black sequin pant suit, cavorts amidst a sea of gaudy red sequined clowns that look more like a pack of devil-rejects from the "Solid Gold" dance try outs. Daniel Massey is mere dead weight as Noel Coward in this weighty musical that is but a footnote to Andrews' otherwise illustrious career.
TRANSFER: A bit of a disappointment here. The original road show edition of "Star" had intermission/ent'racte and exit music. These were included on Fox's deluxe laserdisc presentation but are strangely absent here. It seems at once ironic and tragic to realize that the original road show print was either destroyed, stolen or "lost" at Fox until a print miraculously turned up somewhere in Britain. The laserdisc was mastered from that British print and was properly framed in 2:20 aspect ratio. I'm not exactly sure what this DVD has been minted from but the picture elements appear to have been cropped on all four sides and then reframed to maintain the 2:20 ratio. Colors are bold but not quite as punchy as they ought to be. There's considerable edge enhancement throughout. Age related artifacts are remarkably glaring for a film of this vintage. Over all, visually this is just a middle of the road effort from Fox. The audio is 5.1 and provides a genuinely powerful presence during the musical portions of the film but is remarkably one dimensional throughout the rest of the film. Dialogue is not natural sounding at all!
EXTRAS: Some good and some not so good. The original 1968 featurette and a new documentary on the film are both provided to good advantage. But the "stills" galleries are a mess of overlapping images - some so unflattering that Ms. Andrews should have insisted on the original camera negative, if only to burn the prints herself.
BOTTOM LINE: This isn't a great musical, although fans of Julie Andrews will no doubt be delighted to have the film in whatever condition it is offered. But as a DVD this is not one I'd recommend to anyone who doesn't subscribe to that "spoonful of sugar" mentality.
Rating:
Summary: The film is great, but the DVD is not...
Review: I've long been a fan of this big budget, roadshow musical from 1968. STAR! is the fictionalized biography of the great stage star, Gerturde Lawrence, and Julie Andrews was quite the perfect talent to help embody Lawrence on screen. Robert Wise and associates did exhaustive research and planning to make a film that was theatrical in nature, while providing plenty of opportunities for their star to shine. Spectacularly designed, staged, costumed, jewelled, scored, photographed, and presented, STAR! was a large box-office and critical disappointment in 1968, and was whittled down to a mere shadow of itself over the years. Finally, in the mid-1980s, people began rediscovering this musical via a complete, roadshow print that began making the revival-house rounds. Fox Video held a 25th anniversary, 70mm re-premier in 1993, and then put it onto videocassette (pan and scan, a disaster) and a superlative laserdisc edition that was mastered from the original wide-format Todd-AO elements. This DVD release does the film another disservice in that it is washed out, poorly framed (it seems as if picture information is missing from both sides), and the carefully constructed black and white sequences given an "Oz"-like sepia wash that was never intended. The film's overture is present, but the intermission, entr'acte, and final play-out music are missing (they were fully in place on the laserdisc), further diluting Wise's carefully stylized theatrical presentation. The movie is great, and the sound on the DVD is exapnsively wide, but the picture quality has been destroyed, and the excision of the reserved-seat accoutrements shows that not a lot of thought went into this DVD version. Very, very sad treatment for such a vibrant, entertaining, and long-neglected piece of silver screen history.
Rating: 
Summary: Caviar served as Hamburger...
Review: Fans of STAR! who were impressed with the laserdisc should not let go of it yet.... The Laserdisc of STAR! was mastered from the original 65mm camera negative. (the History notes in the laserdisc say the original version wasn't lost, just untouched in a vault, however a Fox employee later admitted that same negative actually was lost sometime after the laserdisc was done) The picture and sound on the LD transfer were supervised by people who knew the film well. That is clearly not the case with the new DVD. The DVD looks like it's from a 35mm element that has been cropped at the sides to simulate the 2.20 aspect ratio of the laserdisc. Comparison with the Laserdisc will reveal the DVD is missing picture info on all four sides. The pale color in the DVD is nowhere near the saturated, accurate color of the LD, evidenced by the added brown hue in the documentary footage, which was never intended. Someone doing this transfer apparently decided to imitate the sepia tone of the B&W sequences in WIZARD OF OZ, ignoring the detail that the "documentary" within STAR! is a new film in the 1940 sequences that bookend the picture. Just one of the many details in which the Fox DVD team's ignorance of this film is obvious. The Intermission title, Entracte, and final Cast of Characters, are all inexplicably gone, along with the nice added visual and audio enhancements they had on the laserdisc. This is yet another bit of evidence that home video folks have no idea how to handle a roadshow film. Fox also cut the Intermission/Entracte sequence on the DVD of ANNE FRANK, but they left it on HELLO, DOLLY! So clearly they are just not paying attention to such things. The few chapters in the STAR! DVD (as opposed to the ample and well chosen ones on the LD) are randomly chosen with no logical connection to the plot, or to actual desired sequences... none of the supplements are chaptered at all. The exceptionally accurate captions from the laserdisc have been replaced here with lame subtitles that include several mistakes and (are you ready for this?) go completely blank at every song! Apparently Fox thinks no one, hearing impared or not, wants to know the lyrics! It's only a musical, right? and after all it's no MOULIN ROUGE, though they seem desperately intent on making it LOOK like it with the tacky menus and packaging. The laserdisc of STAR! had an extensive and well researched still section that was unfortunately set in rather ugly type on boring backgrounds. Several typographical errors and continuity gaps were also present, and these flaws have not been fixed. So yes, as others have observed, interesting as this material is, it is a chore to get through, and this could have been easily fixed, had someone at Fox cared to make the effort. The most glaringly obvious evidence of carelessness in the DVD production is the two new still galleries that were not on the laserdisc: one very inaccurately titled "Musical Numbers" and another containing B&W shots, Both look literally like someone just scooped up a handful of pictures and threw them in without looking. These sections are a total mess, with no order or logic whatsoever... so many redundant and unnessary shots, and some so unflattering that the studio will likely have to explain to the leading lady and the family of her co-star why they used shots that were obviously not authorized. It is amazing that such unprofessional production was actually approved for release. It's a shame when Fox and other studios don't value their catalog titles enough to bother consulting anyone who would know how they should be handled. The result would be something to be proud of and probably increase sales potential. Instead these films are tossed off cheaply, and if low sales result they will most likely blame the films rather than their ignorant handling of them. But that's corporate Hollywood for you.
Rating:
Summary: DVD of "Star!": Kudos to Fox for the Supplements
Review: Fox has done a very impressive job with the DVD of "Star!" Nearly all of the extensive supplements from the laser disc edition have been included (plus screen test footage, which was not included in the laser edition). Although the considerable amount of text and photos can be a chore to page through, it's worth the effort---such as a bio of Gertrude Lawrence, an overview of the "roadshow" era of film distribution, analysis of the film's production, followed by the disappointing box office reception (and recuts, including a re-release of the film---one hour shorter than the original roadshow version---under a different title). The film is presented in its original roadshow version, although the intermission/entracte and exit music are missing (they were included on the laser disc version). The video and audio are fine but not reference quality and the print used shows its age in spots (not that Fox had much to work from; the roadshow print had been presumed lost for years until a copy surfaced in England). "Star!" has its flaws but it remains a terrific showcase for Andrews' talents (the "Burlington Bertie" number is one of her best). It's a must-have for her fans. Fox is to be commended for resisting the movie-only route and providing so much background material for an old film that isn't considered to be a classic and was a major box office failure. The story behind "Star!" is a good one; this is one special edition where the supplements are definitely worth a look.
Rating:
Summary: *S*T*A*R*!*...has been twinkling since 1968...
Review: (...)
..I think it is delicious...fabulous clothes, wonderful music,
Julie Andrews at her peak...it is all quite delightful. If you
love production values and glorious technicolor...you will find
a great deal to love in this film. If you KNOW you do not like
musicals...leave this on the self for someone else, because it
is the grandaddy of ALL musicals...with a large serving of
great material...the usual failings of a biographical film,
and you just have to embrace the whole. I hope that you do...
you will NOT be sorry. You will be ENTERTAINED.
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