Every once in a while I think of my dad when I turn on a baseball game on TV. He watched the Yankees and the Mets on a 10-inch Dumont black and white TV. Now it’s on a BIG HD screen, 110 inches, in color and surround sound. He never would have left the house.
My mother used to take me, often to Radio City Music Hall, to see movie musicals, South Pacific, West Side Story, Gigi, and, Funny Girl. In those days, believe it or not, in New York, as if it were a play, you had to buy tickets days in advance on many newly released movies. My mother would have loved seeing Funny Girl on my screen and, she too, would have never have left,
The Criterion Funny Girl 4K looks like a movie made yesterday, not one that was made 50 years ago and restored. I give it a 9.5 out of 10 video score. It has a bright, detailed, colorful picture.
The audio, DTS-MA 5.1, is not quite as good. I give it a 7.0 out of ten. It’s highs are a bit shrill an slightly distorted, but the music does fill up the room. The dialogue, mostly from the center, is clear.
27-year-old Barbara Streisand is just incredible and carries the entire movie. She is in almost every scene. Her acting, comic timing ands, of course, singing are extraordinary.
The movie plot, is probably gets a “good” rating but the cast and music bump it to VERY GOOD on my scale. While it based on the life of Fanny Brice, the movie glosses over some points to make it more palatable. The last half hour or so is not very compelling, but the rest of the movie is.
What is left out of the mvoie: Nicky, Fannie's boyfriend, was married in real life when he met and courted her. He, at the same time, spent 2 years in jail for fraud. Nicky is made to look innocent in the give when it came to stock fraud, but in real life, he stole and tried to sell $5,000,000 worth of stocks and got sent to jail for it.
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