The Happiest Millionaire (1967) Technically, this post's sub-heading is correct......it's the last live-action Disney film that Uncle Walt personally greenlighted and supervised during its production........(he passed away before the film went into post production and release)
Some context here: This was the era when studios, salivating over the mega-millions racked up by "The Sound Of Music", produced a series of bloated lumbering 3 hour musicals....exhibited as "roadshows" (meaning, reserved seats, 2 shows a day, an overture, an intermission, exit music, yada, yada....)
Financial and artistic carnage ensued, ultimately destroying the already crumbling structure of the Hollywood studio system.......these ghastly, over-budgeted abortions ("Hello Dolly", Doctor Dolittle", "Goodbye Mr. Chips", "Paint Your Wagon", "Star!") hobbled in and out of theaters like dinosaurs shambling into the tar pits.
Walt Disney, not wanting to be left out of the jumbo roadshow musical biz, wanted his very own 3 hour plus intermission extravaganza.........an odd desire from the guy who delighted and entertained millions with 75 minute animated movies.....
Uncle Walt should have been careful what he wished for.........
"The Happiest Millionaire" now exists as a bizarre cult curiosity, savored only by hardcore Disney buffs.......for everybody else, it's painfully unwatchable, looking like a 1940's film that sat on the shelf for over 25 years......
Walt's choice of subject matter boggled the mind........a creaky play, set in 1916 Philadelphia, based on the life of eccentric millionaire Anthony J. Drexel Biddle......so any kids and parents expecting the magic and fantasy of "Mary Poppins"....tough luck, suckers.
As monotonously played by Disney's go-to All-American Dad, Fred MacMurray, Biddle's an insufferable loon, obsessed with boxing and pushing the country into World War I. The too-brightly-lit film looks like its taking place entirely at the "Main Street U.S.A." section of Disneyland........and indeed the whole film reeks of the cardboard emptiness of a theme park attraction........
To add desperately needed energy to this phony Americana pageant, in pops the tireless and tiresome Brit song-and-dance man Tommy Steele........who'd meet his own musical Armageddon a few months later in "Half A Sixpence", director George Sidney's last gasp effort to duplicate one of his old MGM tuners.
Steele's sort of a relentless update of Donald O' Connor.......as the fresh-off-the-boat Irish butler to the Biddles, he never stops grinning, overacting and over-dancing.........(the only flash of wit in the entire 170 minute running time : when MacMurray catches Steele at one of his direct asides to us, the audience, he demands "Who are you talking to?")
The Young Love department gets handled by the too-cute-to-exist Lesley Anne Warren as MacMurray's daughter and the molded-in-plastic John Davidson, looking like Barbie's perpetual squeeze Ken, newly escaped from the toy shelf box.
Disney enlisted his ever prolific in-house songwriters Robert and Richard Sherman to recapture their "Mary Poppins" lightning-in-a-bottle.. Alas, not this time. You can easily believe how much the Sherman siblings famously despised each other from the score they wrote here........an instantly forgettable load of generic, pseudo-Broadway mush.
I guess to keep the kids in the audience awake, MacMurray's mansion is stocked with a alligators of all sizes, who regularly crawl across the floors........they get far more screen time than the tycoon's two young sons (Eddie Hodges, Paul Peterson), who drop out of sight after the film's first few scenes, never to appear again. Understandable.......the gators are less annoying than the kids.
But let's stop here to praise one brilliant Disney team player......matte artist Peter Ellenshaw......when the young lovers take a ride in the country, they pass by a gallery of Ellenshaw's beautifully rendered painted on glass landscapes.........
It will remain an eternal mystery as to why Walt Disney would think this archaic, staggeringly unimaginative material would appeal to the world wide legions of children and families he'd spent a lifetime cultivating.
We grew up on classic Disney, so we'd prefer to believe that if Walt had lived long enough to see the final cut of "The Happiest Millionaire", he'd ruthlessly slice out at least an hour of it......maybe even re-shoot major portions. (His executives did in fact bitterly squabble over the severe cuts the film underwent after its disastrous release.......none of the re-edits ever improved the movie or kept it from flopping.)
On the other hand, maybe the film turned out exactly as Uncle Walt envisioned......a Disney-fied antiseptic,, never-neverland portrait of the early 20th century he grew up in.....Walt's own version of a Norman Rockwell painting......only with real people moving around in it.
Whatever you believe, it's a tough sit for anyone but a dedicated Disney-ite....2 stars
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