Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Edwin The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

JohnHowardReid A disappointingly watered-down version of the original stage play. Apparently producer Ray Stark was actually married to the daughter of Fanny Brice and Nicky Arnstein and he yielded to his wife's pressures to whitewash her dad on the screen. This has resulted in a very bland adaptation indeed, with the now colorless story occupying an inordinate amount of running time. Lackluster acting by Omar Sharif further compounds the tedium. Even the ebullient Miss Streisand is swamped by the often pointless verbosity of the dialogue. Her efforts to spark this threadbare material into some semblance of dramatic life are usually undermined by lack of co-operation. No vigor or warmth from her mechanical co- star, no effervescence from Wyler's lumbering, heavy-handed direction. Herbert Ross has staged the musical numbers in an equally elephantine fashion. Even his helicopter shots fail to soar. Fortunately, no amount of sabotage can strangle Miss Streisand's vocal talents. Her songs are still the high points of this plodding, pedestrian, unwieldy and over-produced musical.OTHER VIEWS: This garishly expensive but doggedly flat-footed remake of "Rose of Washington Square" dares to downgrade Alice Faye's wistfully beautiful, soul-searching Rose into a self-centered, unashamedly ambitious Brice. Despite her sterling efforts to shape the picture to her personality, Miss Streisand cannot defeat either the dead hands of her co-players or the clinging script. Generally unsympathetic direction allied with occasionally self-glorifying camera-work doesn't help. The best thing about the film is the songs — and the best of these are the oldies. It's fascinating to compare Streisand's throbbing version of Brice's signature tune, "My Man", to Alice Faye's more straightforward yet just as emotionally highly- charged rendering. Interesting too that James F. Hanley's "Second Hand Rose" has been selected for Funny Girl to match the same lyricist's "Rose of Washington Square". Both songs are strikingly similar.

MartinHafer Broadway and Hollywood have a long history of creating stories about real life characters that play fast and loose with the truth and "Funny Girl" is no exception. If you are looking for the history of Fanny Brice or, particularly, Nick Arnstein*, then you should read a book! And, since I am just in the mood to sound like a retired history teacher....I'll just skip my complaints about the accuracy of the film! But, if you don't mind that the details are often just plain wrong, the film is exceptionally entertaining. Barbra Streisand was apparently NOT a pleasant person to work with if you read through the IMDb trivia. However, considering she'd been doing the show on Broadway for years and won the Oscar, perhaps in hindsight her diva-like demands were for the best. The film is filled with wonderful songs by her as well as a nice comedic touch. In fact, pretty much all of the film was excellent except for one odd thing--why Omar Sharif?! His singing was able but to be playing a sophisticated Jewish con-man and gambler, Sharif just seems all wrong. Perhaps Streisand insisted because she thought his being in the film wouldn't overshadow her or would complement her character. I dunno...but it did seem odd. Aside from that, a lovely film--even with its historical lapses (for one, by the way, Streisand was just too pretty to be playing Ms. Brice).*Okay, I will go on a BIT of a rant. The real life Arnstein was from all reports a thoroughly despicable jerk. A crook, a cheat and a man who horribly used his wife. This is nothing like the likable rogue in the film who almost by accident got into trouble with the law! But, having the main character in love with scum wouldn't have been romantic, so I guess I can understand why they so thoroughly sanitized the guy.

Blake Peterson "Show me an actress who isn't a personality and you'll show me a woman who isn't a star," declared Katharine Hepburn when asked about her smashing screen persona. Humble, no. Correct, yes. Take any legendary performer — Humphrey Bogart, Joan Crawford, Cary Grant, Marilyn Monroe — and you will not only find a terrific actor but also a presence that could interrupt the breathing patterns of an entire room just by walking through a door. And if you don't inspire that same breathless room to immediately bow down in a we're-not-worthy Wayne's World dramatization, then you probably aren't a star.Fortunately for us, fortunately for Funny Girl, but unfortunately for the self-proclaimed icon herself, Katharine Hepburn, Barbra Streisand just so happens to be a star — a star that, incidentally, matched Hepburn's explosive performance in The Lion in Winter so well that the two ended up tying for the Oscar win. Now that Funny Girl and The Lion in Winter are nearly a half-century old, it's probably safe to say that Hepburn and Streisand are unofficial gods of the entertainment industry; but Funny Girl is the more important film, introducing the world to a new voice, a new actress, and yes, a new personality.In the years since Funny Girl, Streisand hasn't lost her bewitching zeal, but only a few of her following films have captured the same sort of youthful gusto of her debut. The early days of Babs, with roles in What's Up, Doc? and The Owl and the Pussycat, bring lasting joy. Like many actresses that appeal to the Broadway inclined crowd, she is more fun to watch in quickly-paced adventures in comedy than sappy behemoths like The Mirror Has Two Faces. Funny Girl is a snapshot of everything we've come to ire about Streisand — that immediate likability, that one-million- miles-an-hour comedic timing, those dramatic chops, and that voice. You can bet that the film itself is given the standard Hollywood musical treatment — but what isn't standard is the girl from New Yawk with charisma the size of Alaska and Texas put together.Funny Girl is technically a true story: its leading character, Fanny Brice was, in fact, a famed Ziegfeld girl, and she was, in fact, married to Nicky Arnstein. But Streisand is such a ball-of-fire that we aren't paying much attention to Brice's accomplished (and melodramatic) life. Streisand demolishes every confine a characterization can bring. She's not so much playing Fanny Brice as she much as she is Fanny Brice. She doesn't act out a scene; she is the scene.I suppose for the sake of a plot summary I should cover the basics so you know what you're getting into. The film travels across the life of Brice from the early 1900s to the beginnings of the 1920s, detailing her whirlwind (and lasting) relationship with show business and stormy marriage to gambler Nicky Arnstein (Omar Sharif). There's comedy and music and tear-jerking and romance and overtures and more hoohas that come along with the big-budgeted movie musical genre; Funny Girl has all the makings to become an epic production of the Sound of Music class. But Streisand keeps the film from getting whisked away into unremarkable giganticness. The film is about her, not its ing characters, photography, or set design. Roger Ebert noted that everything other than Streisand is mostly flat. While this is partially true, I think, on the other hand, that if Streisand wasn't the star, suddenly the ing characters, photography, and set design would seem bigger-than-life, extraordinary even. But she's like a blinding light from outer space running around a soundstage; you can only wonder why the items surrounding her don't spontaneously combust.I'm not a part of the devoted fan base that refers to Streisand exclusively as "Babs" and lists "Evergreen" as their theme song, but I am a part of the fan base that recognizes her as one of cinema's most unique and versatile actresses. Funny Girl is a loud and proud musical, and Streisand is the microphone. Read more reviews at petersonreviews.com

Prismark10 Barbra Streisand made her film debut as singer, actress, comedienne Fanny Brice and bagged a Best Actress (co-win) helped by big song numbers such as 'People,' 'My man' and 'Don't rain on my parade.'The first part of the film starts of brightly as Fanny tries to get into showbiz from being a chorus girl and finds out that she steals the show from her bad roller skating. She is brash, determined, single minded, strident and gets her own way which even the Great Ziegfeld soon finds out.The film is then soon bogged down with the love story with Omar Sharif (Nick Arnstein). Although Streisand and Sharif make a good couple, this heavily fictionalized part of the story is just humdrum. You just know that as Brice becomes more famous and rich, her and Nick, her gambler husband will drift apart before he gets involved in a dicey bond caper.Streisand shows the film world her talents and although her singing is spectacular you cannot help wondering whether she could had stretched herself as an actress, because she kept on mining the same type of character. The single minded, dominating, wannabee someone.