tacky dreck

Rating: 1/10 (17 June 2006)

When I was an exchange student in the USA many years ago, my host-father showed me this film as being his favorite movie which he has seen in the cinema many times when it came out and still watches regularly ever since. I had never heard of that movie and since I am quite fond of musicals, I gave it a try.
Now, I dearly love my host-father, but I really hate this movie. I have seen it twice so far, once with him to get to know it and once a few months ago when it was shown on German TV for the first time (!!). But the second time I only watched it to play Mystery Science Theater 3000 with some of my friends.
The reason why this movie had never been shown on German TV before was because the German language track had been lost for many years and was only rediscovered by accident a while ago. But why did nobody in the German speaking region care to find the language track of this much beloved movie earlier? The main reason is that this movie, though it may have been successful in most parts of the world, was not so in Germany, Austria or Switzerland - and for good reason.
Everything in this movie is just sooooooooooooooo terrible clichÃ©! The cinematography, the dresses, the way everybody behaves.... ugh! If this is the way Americans look at Austria (or Germany and Switzerland, since I have the feeling that many do not really know the differences between these countries) than we really have a lot to do to correct this picture.
But there is another reason, why I don't like this movie. It is really insulting to one's intelligence. The whole thing feels like it was made for kids (and done badly), everybody is virtuous, smiling all the time, bouncing around happily running through the countryside just enjoying being alive. Above all they sing songs that could come out of Sesame Street. Actually I was expecting a song that teaches you how to count to ten to pop up any minute. Come on! This is not beautiful, it is just plain dumb!
There was a German oder Austrian movie made in the fifties called "Die Trapp Familie" and following its success, a sequel was produced later about their life in the US. The fifties in the history of German movies were notorious for the tacky "Heimatfilme" (homeland movies) that were produced in this era portraying Germany and Austria as happy beautiful places where happy people lived who did nothing but smile and enjoy the countryside all day long. "Die Trapp Familie" was one of these bad movies, but even this movie did not come close to the abomination that is "The Sound of Music". At least the former had some level, albeit small, of realism.
I like Julie Andrews as an actress and singer, but this movie was not only not saved by her performance, but made even worse. I hope they put the German language track back on the dusty shelf where they found it and never show this movie in Germany again.