Wednesday, September 24, 2014

My Fair Lady (1964)

Today's film is My Fair Lady.  How this won the Best Picture over Mary Poppins is beyond me.  Mary Poppins had better acting, better writing, special effects, songs, everything.  The songs weren't that great, either.  I don't like songs that are "talking" songs and that seems to be what most of them were.

It starts off with Eliza Doolittle, a flower seller, who is busily hollering at everyone.  She has a nasty accent, and this professor named Henry Higgins makes fun of her accent and even sings a few songs about it.  He specializes in speech and meets another man, Colonel Pickering, who specializes in Indian dialects.

Eliza goes to Professor Higgins to pay for speaking lessons, so she can get a better job.  He replies by ridiculing her again.  Later, he bets Pickering that in 6 months he can pass her off as a lady.  So, most of the time, she is practicing her alphabet.  He tries to pass her off at the ascot, but she reverts back to her normal voice when she gets too excited at the horse race.


Later, some hot guy comes to her door, because he was intrigued by her at the ascot.  This leads to more songs.  Eliza goes to a ball, and excels at pretending to be a lady.  Now, all of a sudden, she doesn't like being a lady.  She goes back to where she was selling flowers, and sees her father.  He also has come into money, and is more frustrated than he is happy.  Then, she goes back to the Professor, who spent all that time making fun of her, and the movie ends right there.  I don't like how it suddenly ended.  I'm giving it a 6/10.

2 comments:

  1. I really like the songs in this film, but I hated Henry Higgins. He's an asshole and the last thing I wanted to see was Audrey Hepburn end up with him. She could have done a lot better, like the gentleman caller who sings a song about stalking her - On the Street Where You Live.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for your comment. The gentleman caller was hot. Since it ends so openly, I like to imagine that when he asked about the slippers, she says "fook yo slippas" and rollerskates out of there. It would have been a powerful ending.

      Delete