MAME the movie.

[NathanLaneStalker]

Posted: 1/2/07 at 11:13pm

What's so bad about it? I mean, I haven't seen it yet but I just know that a lot of people thought it was horrible. What was wrong with it?

[D2]

Posted: 1/2/07 at 11:16pm

It has to be seen to be believed. Mere words just can't do it justice, although a few might be: heavy-handed; long; not funny; dreary; miscast (except for Bea); lifeless...

[NathanLaneStalker]

Posted: 1/2/07 at 11:19pm

Why did they get Lucille Ball? Wasn't Angela Lansbury big enough of a name?

[BrodyFosse123]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 12:22am

I don't get it. A friend transferred the widescreen laserdisc print onto DVD for me and I watched it for the 1st time about a month ago...AND was quite shocked on how much I enjoyed it. I mean...it is all those bad things it's famous for BUT they do work and it IS watchable.

Thanks to Ona White's sensational choreography, there are some nice morsels to savor in the film. I mean, it WAS a big-budgeted Warner Bros. film, and it shows.

Lucy is Lucy -- like her or hate her.

[allofmylife]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 12:39am

BrodyFosse123, clearly you love her (and I do too) in her proper realm and this movie was not it. It just made me ill to see Lucy so miscast and SO ridiculously softlit and filtered in "Mame."

[Mojojo5]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 12:55am

It's just... it's just so awkward watching Lucy... so much vaseline on the camera lens. With the exception of Lucy's sluggish bass baritone (what they do to "It's Today" is just ghastly) it's a pretty decent, if sometimes plodding film. Oh if only Angie had been able to do it.

Z.

[NathanLaneStalker]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 12:56am

Why didn't Angela do it?

[frontrowcentre2]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 3:27am

Angie was not considered big (film) box office star at the time.

In an interview she admitted she "wanted to do teh film in the worst way" causing one wag to quip "And that's exactly hw Lucille Ball did it!"

Ball was smart: She had Warner withdraw the Auntie Mame film from TV and theatrical circulation for 15 years. It finally came out again on VHS in 1989 to take its rightful place.

[samcd3]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 3:53am

i much prefer rosalind russell in auntie mame to lucille in mame

[rosscoe(au)]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 6:44am

Tryed to watch it a couple of saturdays ago on TV, what a horrible hour of viewing that was. Ball could not sing to save herself, the child should have died minutes into it, so we did not have to put up with him either.

Bea was the one shinning moment, but even she could not make me sit through the whole thing.

There are better ways to spend your time, then with this crap.

[redhotinnyc2]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 7:19am

I agree with samcd3 - Roz Russell is fantastic as Mame and no one else has come close to her performance (unless you count Charles Busch)...Lucille Ball was a very funny woman - but her delivery just pales in comparison to la Russell.

[alterego]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 7:47am

I can't watch the Mame number without thinking it looked like it was from a Marx brothers movie. Truly terrible. It might have worked onstage but it certainly didn't in the film version.

[NathanLaneStalker]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 8:22am

I'm still going to try to watch it. Did they keep "Bossom Buddies" in?

There have only been a handful of movie musicals I couldn't sit through. The worst was the original Gypsy. I hated that. The remake was great.

[bschneid76]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 8:49am

The film is totally watchable. Maybe Ball isn't terrific as Mame but the film isn't terrible. It was on Showtime a few weeks ago, and I had no trouble watching it again. The MAME number is fun, some of the other numbers are slower than the original. Lucille Ball's performance gets better as the film progresses, and I love Bea Arthur and Jane Connell and Robert Preston who all give terrific performances. I think the film deserves more credit than it gets, although Lansbury would have been great in the part, the film is still enjoyable.

[ILUVTOMG]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 10:19am

there's one great moment: bea arthur slaps her dresser and the dresser slaps her right back. after that i went back to sleep.

[madbrian]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 10:38am

Watch Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame or listen to Angela Lansbury on the cast recording. Lucy is awful, and I find the movie unwatchable. Another Hollywood movie is unlikely, but how about a TV movie? Megan Mullally as Mame and Harriet Harris or Kelly Bishop as Vera.

[nobodyhome]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 11:07am

I find the film totally awful and totally fascinating in its awfulness.

Yes, "Bosoms and Buddies" is in the film, and it's one of the great, awful sequences. Lucy's Mame keeps jabbing Bea's Vera with such viciousness that you start to feel sorry for Vera, which I'm sure was not the intention of the song. In fact, Bea seems to play that Vera is hurt by Mame's viciousness, and I don't see how she could have played it any other way given how Lucy played it.

In addition, the number is set in a restaurant, so Vera's humiliation becomes public.

Poor Lucy was just unable to convey any sort of warmth by that point in her life, a fatal problem in this role. When Patrick wakes her from sleep, she looks at him like she wants to kill him.

The whole film is just one horrifying misfire in performance and staging after another. In addition, though a lot of money was spent, it somehow doesn't look good.

And some staging that worked onstage just looks weird on film. I find the "We Need a Little Christmas" staging, when they drape Christmas lights all over Jane Connell's Gooch and then light her up to be particularly odd. It looks like they're torturing her.

And according to Jerry Herman, some of Lucy's singing had to be recorded one note at a time, with him playing each note at the piano till she got it right, and then pieced together.

But I find it fascinating.
Updated On: 1/3/07 at 11:07 AM

[D2]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 11:24am

Like a train wreck...

[philcrosby]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 12:42pm

What no one has mentioned is that Ball herself put up a good deal of the money too get the film made. It wouldn't have happened at all if she had not wanted to do it.

She was very concerned that it be done as close as possible to the stage play -- hence so many of the original cast, as well as the director and choreographer. (Even firing Madeline Kahn when she was not a copy of Connell, and rumor has it getting more laughs than Ball.) Robert Preston apparently didn't care much for her after Ball insisted he wear lifts in his shoes to make him appear taller and he refused.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 12:50pm

Even if it had been perfectly cast, they'd still have to deal with the fact that its directed like sludge, stuck in the fifties in its mentality, and lets face it, as much as I love Herman, the music isn't that great.

[bschneid76]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 12:50pm

ILUVTOMG-- I love that moment in the film. I think the film for me is a guilty pleasure, I was involved with the show once and I guess it just brought back pleasent memories. Granted Ball cannot sing the part very well, but she still gives the film some energy. The part where they drape the lights on Gooch's body is in the show. We did it with our production. It shows they had no tree so they placed Gooch up there to be the pretend tree. I think the Mame sequence and the Boosum Buddies scene are the best. However I do love "The Man in the Moon" sequence, I love when Ball and Arthur are hooked together and they try to pry them apart as the curtain rises and they bow. Hilarious!

[B3TA07]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 12:55pm

I've never seen this show. Is it any good?

Posted: 1/3/07 at 1:07pm

i saw it as a child on THE LATE LATE SHOW (i dont think they have those anymore, what with 24 hr cable) & it blew my mind, i thought it was the most terriffic thing...that was also long before internet, so there wasnt anyway for me to find out more about it. come to think of it, i believe it was a queer-awakening moment.

when i was a little older, i got to see the Roz Russell version & i loved it! though i didnt understand why they werent singing....

then i got to see the Lucy version again & with some context & age, it was painfully...sad? bad? i dunno. i felt embarrassed for her, & for myself for all those years i thought it was so great.

but I still love Bea Arthur & if nothing else, its be commended for committing her VERA to film!!!

but you can get whiplash from going back & forth from the regular lens to the vaselined Lucy shots.

btw, theres a great SCTV where Catherine O'Hara does a great LUCY-as-MAME...i think COUNT FLOYDS SCARY CHRISTMAS....she croaks out "chriiiiiiiiistmaaaaaaaaaas"

[doodlenyc]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 1:14pm

"I was never in the chorus! I was NEVER in the chorus!"

Arthur's reading of that line alone makes this worthwhile.

She was nominated for a GG for this.

[nobodyhome]

Posted: 1/3/07 at 1:20pm

"The part where they drape the lights on Gooch's body is in the show."

Which was why I preceded my description of it with "And some staging that worked onstage just looks weird on film."

Btw, according to some accounts, George Cukor was originally hired to direct the film. But then Ball had a skiing accident, breaking her right leg, shortly before filming was to start. By the time she had recuperated, Cukor was no longer available and Saks was hired.


Updated On: 1/3/07 at 01:20 PM