Funny Girl On Blu Ray

The screen shots look great!

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I have this and the new Hello, Dolly! blu-ray as well. Two of the best blu-rays I've purchased this year!

The Funny Girl Blu Ray is gorgeous. It's amazing to watch a movie I've seen countless times and notice new things via the high def master. I wish they'd put new extras with it, but the new picture/sound makes up for it. Hello, Dolly!!! is also well done.

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For me, Funny Girl doesn't hold up nearly as well as Hello, Dolly! today (as a film).

Both are giant, splashy musicals with Streisand giving stellar performances in each. Dollly doesn't seem to buckle under its own weight the way Funny Girl does.

Funny, as a kid, I felt the opposite.

But Dolly has pace and rhythm and a strangely giddy style that carries throughout (thank you, Gene Kelly). Outside of Streisand's brilliant performance as Fanny Brice, the latter feels bloated to me. Some truly wonderful moments, but a lot of it creaks and stumbles. The idea of adding "more scenes" sounds like having a fifth helping of a very rich dessert.

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Oh, I agree the whole thing is overdone, but it maintains its own giddy, inflated, "ice cream social" style throughout.

I guess that's the difference for me. Dolly is inflated (but still buoyant), and Funny Girl is (too often) bloated.

I think I need a Gas-X now ...

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I rather agree with best12bars. And I, too, felt the opposite as a teenager.

I haven't seen the FUNNY GIRL blu-ray, but watching it on HD cable last night I was rather amazed that I had ever found it amusing or even interesting.

The on-stage numbers still work, but the rest of the score is just exhausting. IMO, obviously.

Really?? I mean there's no question that the Hello Dolly film is perfection, but I find Funny Girl way more powerful and the score for the movie absolutely thrilling, with perhaps the exception of Sadie. Maybe I'm biased since My Man is one of my absolute favorites songs of all time, along with People and Don't Rain On My Parade. I've never seen a production of Funny Girl but I listen to its OBCR quite often, and IMO the film actually improved the original score.

The Music That Makes Me Dance is one of my all time favorite songs.

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The film of course cuts back a lot of the non Fanny material from the play. I suppose that was smart--but, while the play on stage is definitely flawed, but I sorta miss the scope being more open when I watch the film... If that makes sense.

You didn't like People or Rain On My Parade? Both of those are not on stage numbers and my favorites.

I've always thought "People" was a snooze-fest, DAME. The lyric is just impossibly dull, despite the lovely tune.

And "Don't Rain on My Parade" is powerfully sung, of course, but what, exactly, are "...ten American Beauty toes..."? My point isn't that the line bothers me so much but that the lyrics in general are banal, if not random.

Really, I have to wait for "Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat" and (my favorite) "His Is the Only Music" midway through the second act. Both, of course, were cut from the film.

I think the Yiddish humor was novel for some of us in 1969, but by now it is the stuff of basic-cable sitcoms. And the core "problem" of the play--that poor Nicky is saddled with a smart and successful wife--isn't worth our notice.

In short, what I found witty 50 years ago turns out to be schtick. (But I understand that the show and movie hold fond memories for lots of us and there's no shame in that.)

Updated On: 5/6/13 at 08:54 PM

Someone somewhere must have the cut scenes with Ann Francis.

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I'm bveyond the point of ever trying to justify Merrill's lyrics (I understand why he turned it down, but it's too bad Sondheim didn't reunite with Styne for the score.) But I've come to terms with that and don't let them bother me anymore (really, in show order, it starts with a girl's incidentals being no bigger than two lentils and just goes even further South from there...)

I had no idea Francis' material was cut. The film is *long* (and feels it) even with the cuts, so it could have purely been a time thing.