Rating: 
Summary: "Hans Christian Andersen" is a colorful entertainment....
Review: ...the kind of thing I really like to watch especially around
the holidays. There is a generous helping of ballet in this
film, too, and you can even briefly see the famous Danish
dancer Eric Bruhn. The film is really aimed at family audiences,
but in a very off beat way. Danny Kaye is not a romantic hero,
but he is a charming performer who brings songs and stories
to the viewer while keeping his amature standing as a cobbler.
I recommend this if you need something to entertain the visiting
holiday crowd. It is pleasant and colorful and certainly not
likely to offend anyone.
Rating:
Summary: Loveable (if long)
Review: A fan of Danny Kaye for life, I viewed this with grandchildren 8 and 4 who stuck with it despite some long ballet passages and a contrived plot. There are a number of touching scenes, good songs, and of course wonderful stories.
Rating: 
Summary: I'm going to Copenhagen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: AHHHHHHHH this is like the best movie! Whats the matter thumby? still unhappy? would you like a playmate? give him a kiss!
Rating:
Summary: FOR FANS OF HANS
Review: Children will undoubtedly love this confection as I did. As an adult, if you watch this film as a fantasia of the great Dane's life it is bearable; otherwise the going gets pretty sticky. The ballerina originally was to be played by the eloquent Moira Shearer, but she was pregnant and therefore unavailable; the part went to the rather lacklustre Zizi Jeanmaire. The scene near the beginning where Hans is telling the kids stories looks amateurish in the kid's reactions. The picture was Goldwyn's GREATEST moneymaker and there are wonderfully hummable tunes such as "No Two People" "Thumblina" "Wonderful Copenhagen" and the sad "Inch Worm" Young children should love this sugar-coated confection which bears little reference to the real Andersen (probably just as well as he was notoriously morose). The Danish people weren't too thrilled as a whole with this film when they saw it and most thought it was insulting to their national hero.
Rating:
Summary: Magical story telling!!
Review: Danny Kaye is Hans Christian Andersen. There's no doubt about it after you see this film. His portrayal of this writer is winsome and magical, and the songs he weaves coming from the stories he writes and reads cause the children everywhere to want to get out of their classrooms and go the town square or valley to hear him tell them.The one spot I had difficulty with was with the scenes where Hans falls in love with the ballerina, and while it may have some historicity, I found it a little distracting. But this is a small thing, and overall, this is a marvelous film and highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Magical story telling!!
Review: Danny Kaye is Hans Christian Andersen. There's no doubt about it after you see this film. His portrayal of this writer is winsome and magical, and the songs he weaves coming from the stories he writes and reads cause the children everywhere to want to get out of their classrooms and go the town square or valley to hear him tell them. The one spot I had difficulty with was with the scenes where Hans falls in love with the ballerina, and while it may have some historicity, I found it a little distracting. But this is a small thing, and overall, this is a marvelous film and highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Sound level too low... on the DVD
Review: Danny Kaye is my favorite. I got the dvd. I couldn't hear it so I exchanged it for another. No go. That one's overall sound level was too low as well. Pity. I have returned both. Real pity.
Rating:
Summary: Delightful Children's Musical
Review: Danny Kaye plays the Danish cobbler-storyteller, Hans Christian Andersen. At the beginning he is said by the schoolmaster of the village of Odense he is causing trouble. The trouble is he tells stories to the village children, and they learn things like numbers falling in love and marrying each other. One town person said of his stories: They asked their daughter what time it was? She said "the minute and hour hands weren't speaking to each other. They were in love with the second hand. So they wouldn't make up until they met at 12 o' clock." After all the commotion with the village officials, Hans goes back to his cobbler shop. There his apprentice friend, Peter talks him into getting away from the village and going to Copenhagen.
Reluctant at first Hans agrees to go to Copenhagen with Peter. There Hans meets and falls in love with Doro (Jeanmarie), a beautiful French ballerina. But later learns that she is married to the demanding Niels (Farley Granger). Overwhelmed by his love for her, he is inspired to write, 'The Little Mermaid' for Doro. The story of the Little Mermaid, like Doro goes-that she looked for love from the wrong man. Hans becomes popular with the people of Copenhagen and his gift in telling stories to the children. So Andersen's fame grew out of his plays and stories. Some of the musical scores that stand out are the most known of Andersen's best loved works. Those most memorable numbers are from 'Inchworm,' 'Thumbelina' and 'The Ugly Duckling.' Hans later finds that the ballerina truly loves her husband, so Hans returns home to his village of Odense. There he tells his stories to the children who loves to hear his fairy tales. You may not find Kaye's usual comic flair here. He extends his more poignant side of the famous storyteller. This was Kaye's final film of his career beofre embarking on his life's love of working with Unicef. If you like to read about Andersen, he wrote his auto-bio, 'The Fairy Tale of My Life.' The film itself is a delightful children's story that the whole family can love.
Rating: 
Summary: Danny Kaye never disappoints
Review: For all the film's deficiencies, Danny Kaye, always an outstanding performer, manages to be engaging and quite delightful.
The plot has little to do with Hans Christian Andersen, and is based quite loosely on some of his tales, not his far from whismsical life. Only the happiest parts of Andersen's least troubling stories are included (in musical adaptation) - there is no hint of the writer of the Little Match Girl or the Red Shoes. This is strictly a vehicle for a warm, kind-hearted, naive Danny Kaye portrayal. It is good entertainment, if taken as a Kaye act rather than for literary or artistic merit.
Rating:
Summary: Hans Christian Andersen not quite, but very entertaining
Review: Hans Christian Andersen (1805-75) was an Ugly Duckling. He lived in the third largest town Odense, in Denmark. The son of a cobbler he was poverty ridden and a failure as an actor and it wasn't until he moved to Copenhagen and won the patronage of Frederick VI, through his poetry, that he wrote his fairy tales and developed into a swan. Like many artists he wasn't particularly happy, and never did marry, although he was very fond of Jenny Lind (1820-87) the Swedish Nightingale a soprano given the name by P.T. Barnum during her tour of the United States between 1850-52.) Charles Vidor's film does state at the beginning, This is not the story of Hans Christian Andersen but a fairy tale about the great spinner of fairy tales. The Danes objected to the way Hans Christian Andersen was portrayed even though Goldwyn had rejected 21 previous manuscripts, so the film company inserted this statement in the credits. Danny Kaye with his chiselled features does resemble H.C.Andersen when looking at his profile, but apart from this facial feature that's where it stops. Kaye had dark hair but Hollywood soon changed that and he became a blonde, Andersen also had dark hair but he kept it that way. Unlike some earlier musicals, this film does have a strong story line with loads of songs written by "Baby, It's Cold Outside", Frank Loessen, such as Thumbelina, Ugly Duckling, No Two People, and of course Wonderful Copenhagen. The scenery is very clever, the backgrounds look like illustrations from fairy tale books, but as the camera zooms in to the foreground the buildings and props become three dimensional similar to a pop-up-book. There are four ballet scenes that I probably found boring back in '52, but revisiting them now, they are visually very interesting, technically I wouldn't know if they are good or mediocre but for a Hollywood musical film, four ballets must of taken an enormous amount of consideration seeing as the film is really for kids. Once again the backdrops for the ballets also resemble fairy tale illustrations and pop-up-books. Instead of a soprano, Andersen falls in love with a ballet dancer and here's a musical that doesn't have a very happy ending because poor Hans gets mixed up with a married woman. The ballet dancer Doro, is played by Zizi Jeanmaire, and is married to Niels played by Farley Granger. During the last part of the film, the audience is taken behind the scenes of the ballet company playing at the Royal Theater in Copenhagen, but this isn't a film of a show included in a show, similar to earlier musicals, but an uplifting musical film with lots of music with catchy tunes helped by a ton of children. The last ballet scene takes 17 minutes, quite long for a popular movie. In the film Hans writes a story especially for his love Doro, unfortunately Niels locks him in a cupboard so Andersen never sees her perform but has to use his imagination. The ballet takes place on land and under the ocean. The surface waves are pop-up so that the dancers can be seen dancing in between the swells, it's really very clever visually, and there's no trickery here. Under the sea filled with monsters and witches, the heroine is probably attached to a pulley so that she can be seen swimming for the surface. There are no blue screens in this film, all effects are up-front and work perfectly similar to a staged ballet. Once again the technicolor process is used and this enhances the fairy tale effect with vivid colors. Hans Christian Andersen fairy stories are not violent when compared to the Grimm brothers, but the themes usually have a lesson, and in the story written for Doro's ballet, "The Little Mermaid," it is saying that aiming for the stars does not always bring happiness, but then of course Walt Disney hadn't yet arrived on the scene and he soon changed that philosophy.
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