Robin Williams's dizzying and hilarious voicing of the Genie is the main attraction of Aladdin, the third in the series of modern Disney animated movies that began with 1989's The Little Mermaid and heralded a new age for the genre. After a sultan (Douglas Seale) gives his daughter, Jasmine (Linda Larkin), three days to find a husband, she ...
Fantasia, Walt Disney's animated masterpiece of the 1940s, grew from a short-subject cartoon picturization of the Paul Dukas musical piece The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Mickey Mouse was starred in this eight-minute effort, while the orchestra was under the direction of Leopold Stokowski. Disney and Stokowski eventually decided that the notion of ...
Promoted as a family musical by Paramount Pictures, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is more of a black comedy, perversely faithful to the spirit of Roald Dahl's original book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Enigmatic candy manufacturer Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) stages a contest by hiding five golden tickets in five of his scrumptious ...
Beauty and the Beast is widely considered the best animated Disney feature of the studio's 1980s/1990s renewal of the form. Based on the classic French fairy tale, it tells the story of Belle (voiced by Paige O'Hara), an intelligent young woman scorned by her townspeople for being a bookworm, weary of fighting off the advances of the arrogant ...
Sidney Lumet's The Wiz is the film version of the popular Broadway musical that retells the events of L. Frank Baum's classic novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz through the eyes of a young African-American kindergarten teacher who's "never been below 125th Street." Leaving a large family dinner to chase her dog into a snowstorm, Dorothy (Diana Ross) ...
Bedknobs and Broomsticks was produced several years after Walt Disney's death and released in the fall of 1971. As it turned out, Bedknobs was frequently compared to Mary Poppins -- probably thanks to several striking similarities between the two productions, notably the presence in the cast of David Tomlinson, the use of Cockney children as ...
Reportedly, Vincente Minnelli turned down the opportunity to film Brigadoon on location in Scotland insisting that MGM's studio mockups looked more Scottish than the genuine article. This lavish adaptation of the Lerner and Loewe Broadway musical stars Gene Kelly as an American tourist who stumbles upon an enchanted Scottish village. Every 100 ...
1959's Li'l Abner was adapted from the hit 1956 Broadway musical--which, in turn, was inspired by the satirical comic strip by Al Capp. Peter Palmer recreates his Broadway role as Li'l Abner Yokum, the handsome, muscle-bound, muscle-brained leading hillbilly of Dogpatch, USA. The citizens of Dogpatch are in an uproar because their ramshackle ...
Rex Harrison, although not at all like the portly man described in Hugh Lofting's charming series of children's stories, is sheer perfection as the kindly animal doctor in Leslie Bricusse's musical fantasy Doctor Dolittle. Sadly, Harrison is the only thing nearing perfection in this overstuffed and over-mounted fiasco that nearly brought down 20th ...
Filmed in Austria, this British-made musical retells the story of Cinderella as it is found in books of fairy tales. The Prince, Edward, is played by Richard Chamberlain, Cinderella by Gemma Craven. In her role as the Prince's witty mother, Dame Edith Evans provides many of the movie's highlights. The musical score and songs written by Richard ...
In this film, the mysterious Kira (Olivia Newton-John) appears to assist and inspire a young artist, Sonny Malone (Michael Beck). When she helps him meet up with the rich Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly), the two join up together to create an artistic and business success, an unique club called "Xanadu." ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
The presence of William Powell as legendary showman Flo Ziegfeld at the beginning of Ziegfeld Follies might lead an impressionable viewer from thinking that this 1946 film is a Technicolor sequel to the 1936 Oscar-winning The Great Ziegfeld. Not so: this is more in the line of an all-star revue, much like such early talkies as Hollywood Revue of ...
Scrooge was designed as a follow-up to 1968's Oliver!, the Oscar-winning musicalization of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist. The umpteenth musical version of Dickens' 1843 novelette A Christmas Carol, Scrooge features several sprightly Leslie Bricusse songs, including the bona fide hit "Thank You Very Much." Buried under mounds of latex, Albert ...
The third and definitive film adaptation of L. Frank Baum's 1900 children's fantasy, this musical adventure is a genuine family classic that made Judy Garland a star for her heartfelt performance as Dorothy Gale, an orphaned young girl unhappy with her drab black-and-white existence on her aunt and uncle's dusty Kansas farm. Dorothy yearns to ...
MGM knew it would take a bath on its all-black musical Cabin in the Sky (few Southern theaters of 1943 would touch the film), but the studio still provided its standard A-plus production values to the film; besides, it served as a training ground for up-and-coming director Vincente Minnelli. Based on the Broadway musical by Lynn Root, John ...
Ted Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, wrote and helped design this eccentric fantasy about a young boy named Bart (Tommy Rettig) who, like most young boys, doesn't enjoy his piano lessons with the mean-spirited Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried). He figures his time would be better spent playing baseball with his friends or helping his grown-up buddy ...
In Jules Bass' puppet-animated A Year Without A Santa Claus, an elf and a young boy have to rescue Santa from the evil Heat Meiser and Snow Meiser. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide
Hans Christian Andersen was Sam Goldwyn's final production for RKO Radio release, and also the producer's last Danny Kaye vehicle. The Moss Hart-Myles Connolly screenplay largely disregards the facts concerning Denmark's great storyteller, opting for a fanciful blend of comedy, fantasy, romance and music. As played by Kaye, Hans Christian Andersen ...
Damn Yankees is a frothy, faithful adaptation of the 1956 Broadway hit. In an amusing slant on the "Faust" legend, aging baseball fan Joe Boyd (Robert Schafer) is given an opportunity to lead his beloved Washington Senators to victory by a devilish gent named Applegate (Ray Walston). Boyd is transformed into handsome young "Shoeless" Joe Hardy ...
March of the Wooden Soldiers is the 1952 reissue title for Hal Roach's 1934 film version of Victor Herbert's Babes in Toyland. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy star as Stannie Dum and Ollie Dee, bumbling apprentices to the master toymaker of Toyland. This joyous fairy-tale community is populated by all the colorful Mother Goose characters we know and ...
A love-sick nobleman seeking to marry his sweetheart does his best to find his ruling prince a suitable bride so that he himself may wed in this screen adaptation of the popular Broadway musical The Princess and the Pea. No one in Prince Dauntless (Denis O'Hare)'s kingdom is permitted to marry until the prince himself exchanges vows -- a problem ...
In his first postwar animated feature, Walt Disney attempted to repeat the Fantasia formula, substituting "pop" music for the Classics. Make Mine Music consists of ten unrelated cartoon vignettes, each one featuring a popular recording artist. "A Rustic Ballad" is the story of the Martin-Coy hillbilly feud, narrated musically by the King's Men. "A ...
Kathleen Battle, Francisco Araiza, and Kurt Moll star in this production of one of Mozart's best-loved operas, staged by the Metropolitan Opera of New York with sets designed by David Hockney. In Mozart's witty and whimsical story, the wise but wily Sarastro (Kurt Moll) kidnaps the beautiful but naive Pamina (Kathleen Battle), whose mother is the ...
Long resistant to film adaptations of her Mary Poppins books, P.L. Travers finally succumbed to the entreaties of Walt Disney, and the result is often considered the finest of Disney's personally supervised films. The Travers stories are bundled together to tell the story of the Edwardian-era British Banks family: the banker father (David ...
This fourth film version of the warhorse Edward Knoblock theatrical piece Kismet was based on the Broadway musical version of the same property. Howard Keel stars as Hadji, the poet of old Baghdad, who goes from beggar to millionaire in a single day. Hadji's daughter Marsinah (Ann Blyth) falls in love with the young Caliph (Vic Damone), while ...
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