Star!

Rating:
Summary: Good, family movie
Review: If you are looking for a thriller, go someplace else. If you are looking for a sexy, romance filled film, go someplace else. If you are looking for a good, wholesome film to watch with your family (and never, not once, have to shield your kids' eyes or cover their ears) then Princess Diaries 2 is for you. This movie has comedy, a little suspense, and a fun edge of romance. Plus, it has Julie Andrews - need we say more? As a bonus to the Julie Andrews fans of the world, she sings in this movie - although pitched very low and not the usual soprano that you are used to, you will thoroughly enjoy her very familiar voice! She is the epitome of class and although she is in real life a Dame, she will have you believing that she really is a queen.

Rating:
Summary: A good try, but in the end, a failure
Review: Robert Wise usually makes some good movies, but this one just reeks of a studio system misfiring on every level. And then he went on to make TWO PEOPLE with Lindsay Wagner and Estelle Parsons, a mock-indie location movie in the mode of EASY RIDER (and employing Peter Fonda as a repentant draft dodger) which seemed to prove he couldn't do the anti-studio thing either. What a shame, because it looks like Julie Andrews was really putting everything she had into her performance! Maybe if the movie was about a fictional stage actress of the 20s and 30s it might have worked--but then why not make it about a fictional actress of the 1960s, i.e., make it truly contemporary? I expect the reason is that the studio saw money in a period piece, even though it had already weathered a series of huge financial period flops from CLEOPATRA to DOCTOR DOOLITTLE.

Yes, Julie is terribly miscast as Gertrude Lawrence, but at the same time she's awfully good; maybe it's fairer to say that Gertrude Lawrence is not the right part for Julie. And what was the idea of casting Richard Crenna in the man's role? Yuck! He's straight from TV! I remember seeing STAR! as a child with my grandmother, and she clucked her head going in, saying that any movie that had to had an exclamation point in its title was reeking of desperation. Grandma, you were right as usual.

The title song is terrific though.

Rating:
Summary: As long as it is, it's not long enough!
Review: Star! is basically a pretty terrific movie. Unfortunately it was released as a roadshow, a term which I have no doubt means nothing to anyone younger than I. Roadshows were longer-form films shown at advanced ticket prices and featuring an intermission for a bathroom break and a resupply of popcorn. To get the extra ticket money from moviegoers, roadshows had to offer something more than length, like epic vistas with thousands of extras (Lawrence of Arabia, Cleopatra), or lots of stars and lots of publicity (Around the World in 80 Days), or film versions of Broadway smashes (My Fair Lady). Ideally the studios would release fewer than one a year, but Star! opened against another roadshow - Funny Girl. I've always felt that Fox made a huge mistake in timing with Star!, and then after the box office failure the film disappeared for a long time. I first saw it on premium cable in October of 1993. Taken strictly as a biography of Gertrude Lawrence it does her few favors and would have been more interesting if it, one, showed more of her mistreatment by Hollywood (her stage successes going to "film" actresses, her lack of an Oscar for Glass Menagerie), and two, dealt more with her relationship with her daughter. But - the film is filled with the musical numbers associated with Lawrence and they are performed by Julie Andrews! So while a longer flm with more attention to detail would have pleased me, I'm sure adding more music would have pleased others. Let's have a DVD that allows us to see all the sequences not used!

Rating:
Summary: A SHOWCASE FOR JULIE ANDREWS' AMAZING TALENTS
Review: Yes, this film is long, yes the screenplay is a bit weak, but WHO is on the screen almost the ENTIRE film brilliantly acting, singing and dancing in 150 different costumes?? Julie Andrews!
If you like Julie Andrews, you will LOVE this film! This film showcases her talents like no other film. She is TERRIFIC! The DVD quality is superb, and the extras are great. This is also a great film for fans of bigtime musicals! Not a big hit when it came out, but it has aged amazingly well.


Rating:
Summary: Top Julie,Average Movie
Review: Noel Coward said of this movie,"It will undoubtedly be a marvelous commercial film,and Julie Andrews and Danny will
be wonderful;so will all those nostalgic,unforgettable songs.
But it won't bear the slightest possible resemblance to the
Gertie we knew".Coward,who was one of Gertrude Lawrence's best
friends and wrote some of Daniel Massey's(who played him)dialogue,was so right!"STAR!" is two films in one.First,it's
basically nothing more than a routine Hollywood musical biogrpahy,full of more fiction than fact.Robert Wise,Saul
Chaplin, and Twentieth Century-Fox spent far too much money on
the sumptuous sets and costumes(which do look beautiful in
Ernest Laszlo's gorgeous Technicolor photography).They should
have spent it on William Fairchild's banal script.And who said
it had to be three hours?Wise and editor William Reynolds should
have cut it by at least one hour.
But secondly, "STAR!" is also a Julie Andrews star vehicle, and
on that level it works.Vocally and dramatically,this is one of
Julie's best performances.Although she was wrong for the part
due to differences in voice and personality, Julie is winning
and winsome here.And she's never looked better on film!And,oh,
that soundtrack!Gershwin,Porter,Weill,and the others have rarely
been perfromed so well(magnificent work by arranger/conductor
Lennie Hayton and his crew!).
All in all,though, this is just a typical big-budget 1960s musical-entertaining for an evening,but nothing more.Not the
horror most critics and fans called it,but not a classic,either.
For a much better musical bio,try Doris Day's "Love Me Or Leave
Me".

Rating:
Summary: Missing STAR!
Review: I own the VHS version of STAR! and the Laser Disc too. Both are compete versions of the film. Now I purchased the DVD of STAR! and find it pales to both the VHS and Laser Disc. What happened to the intermission title and Enter-act music? We are talking about a minute and a half of music. The DVD even talks about the intermission music and how to control the presentation of the second act. This is totally unexceptable. I think I will return this DVD and get my money back. I'll stick to the beautiful complete version on Laser Disc.