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Reviewed by UK Guest, 27th Apr 2003. |
| Review Summary: A very bad new edition |
Overall Score: 3/5
 
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Review: This underrated gem from the second Golden Age of Hollywood musicals deserves the best presentation possible, and this one is NOT it. It is blurry and unfocused, lacks definition, colours that fade into on another.
To make things even worse, the songs have no optional subtitles, which to me is a crime with musical comedy. The lyrics to this movie are great, they are sassy, they are clever, and they are the sole reason for subtitles on musicals, but here you don't get them for some reason. And neither can you skip directly into the songs.
The sound is passable, though, and the film has some of Cole Porter's most wonderful, most intimate songs, such as the rhumba 'Mind If I Make Love to You', sung by Sinatra, the spectacularly musical 'Now You Has Jazz' with Crosby and Armstrong, and the hilarious duet between Crosby and Sinatra, 'Well, Did You Evah!'.
It has always been popular to say that the comedy 'The Philadelphia Story', of which 'High Society' is a fairly obedient musical remake, is the superior film, but watch them both without prejudice,and you might find that nothing quite tops the exuberance, drunk on champagne as the characters are most of the time, of this film, the driness of Bing Crosby, commenting on a lame line from one of the others, "Oh, I wish I had said that!". Wonderful.
But, again: this is not the version that you want. |
Ratings
| Value For Money: |
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3 |
| Review Score: |
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3 |
| Recommended? | |
No |
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DVD Films