Kiss Me Kate (1953)

reviewed by
Harvey S. Karten


KISS ME KATE

Reviewed by Harvey Karten MGM/Warner Bros. Classics Director: George Sidney Writer: Sam Spewack (play) Bella Spewack Cast: Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel, Ann Miller, Keenan Wynn, Bobby Van, Tommy Rall, James Whitmore, Kurt Kasznar, Bob Fosse, Ron Randell, Willard Parker, Davie O'Brien, Claud Allister, Ann Codee, Carol Haney Screened at: Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St NYC

You hear it all the time from disgruntled patrons of Broadway's musical theater. "What's with the stage these days?" they complain. "You leave a show and you don't have a single song that you can hum." While I've rarely seen people actually "humming" when they left their seats during the golden age of the American musical, the modern complaints have some merit. Fans of Stephen Sondheim may say with their noses in the air that the absence of melody nowadays is a plus--that easy-to-mimic tunes are not only dated but simple-minded--but this rejoiner comes across as sour grapes. Truth to tell, there was only one Renaissance in the history of the West, Spain had its one golden age, Athens was once the center of civilization but is certainly not that now, and the great era that gave us Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Lerner and Loewe, Rodgers and Hammerstein and the like is over. Kaput.

We welcome revivals of the relative handful of great musicals with open arms. This time the nationally famous art- house, New York's Film Forum, is the scene of a rekindling of "Kiss Me Kate," which plays there from July 7 through July 20. Though the glasses you'll get at the box office may give you a headache (especially if your nose already bears a pair of its own), the Film Forum is tossing out this musical version of "The Taming of the Shrew" in remarkable 3-D. People of a certain age like me can pretend that after the movie they can resume rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers, playing stoop ball and marbles, while the young 'uns can be introduced to a technology that was the hottest thing in its day ("House of Wax," "Bwana Devil") but like Internet stocks seems to have wound up on history's stockpile of has-beens.

Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel star in this classic musical. If you think that Tom Cruise and Thandie Newton make good music together, you might change your mind when you watch their characters, Lilli Vanessi as the Bard's Katherine and Fred Graham as the great man's Petruchio make goo-goo eyes at each other, fight like crazy, make goo- goo eyes and fight--in either case showing that their relationship by modern standards is too damn hot.

The subplot involving a romance between Ann Miller's Lois Lane in the "Taming" role of Bianca and Keenan Wynn's Lippy doesn't match that fervor, but boy can Miss Ann dance. Her showstopping number, "Too Damn Hot," pops up almost before you've put on your tinted glasses and you're on the fast track with one of the hottest (if not entirely civilized) pieces of choreography in musical theater history.

Just think of how Shakespeare has been mangled in the current production of "Love's Labour's Lost" which, ironically, uses some of Cole Porter's songs, but the dances just plain don't fit. In this case, thanks to the genius of George Sidney at the helm, there's never a dull moment nor a single instance of a song or dance simply shoehorned in with no bearing on the story. So brush up your Porter if you must have a background before seeing this, and go!

Not Rated. Running time: 110 minutes. (C) 2000 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com


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