http://www.susangranger.com/
Susan Granger's review of "THE FANTASTICKS" (M.G.M./UNITED ARTISTS)
It's been more than 40 years since the two-act, fairy-tale musical by Tom Jones with lyrics by Harvey Schmidt opened off-Broadway at the tiny Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village. Performed simply no scenery and few props, it relied primarily on the audience's imagination, much like "Our Town." In Michael Ritchie's screen version, it's set in rural Arizona, where a traveling carnival sets up in the vast wilderness. The plot still revolves around two fathers (Joel Grey, Brad Sullivan) who pretend to have an on-going feud in hopes that their respective children, Louisa and Matt (Jean Louisa Kelly, Joseph McIntyre), will behave as teenagers have throughout the centuries: rebel against them and fall in love. When this happens, the fathers must find a way to resolve their imaginary feud, so they conspire to have the carnival's handsome El Gallo (Jonathan Morris) pretend to be a bandit and kidnap Luisa so that Matt rescue her. What they don't figure into their plan is that Luisa might become infatuated with her abductor and that Matt might not be up to the task. What works is the simple story and evocative musical score - with "Try to Remember" now used as a finale. What doesn't work is opening up the concept to the big-screen; unlike "Oklahoma," for instance, the wind doesn't come sweeping down the plains. As a result, video sales will no doubt top theatrical revenues. Perhaps that's why this film has sat on the shelf for five years. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "The Fantasticks" is a charming, nostalgic 7. It's timeless, old-fashioned family-fare, filled with hopes and dreams which bridge the generations and offer all of us a feeling of wondrous well-being. But is there still an audience for movie musicals?
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews