Has anybody noticed? (Yes, a couple of drawbacks)

Rating: Null/10 (8 June 2002)

By all means, enjoy this movie as I have for many years. Never in any way did it merit holding the record as the top box office hit for as long as it did.
All filmings of Rodgers and Hammerstein, with the exception of The King and I and the little known State Fair, present problems. Two neat numbers from the play are excised and replaced with two truly atrocious ones ("Confidence in Confidence Alone" and "I Must Have Done Something Good," which is the setting for what may be the most unintentionally laughable scene in all movie history, pace Ben Hur). There are other defects of detail. Why does Maria tell the children that the Laendler is an "Austrian" folk dance? They know that they are Austrian. They would also know about the dance by this time. The last choral "goodnight" in "So Long, Farewell" makes one want to gag.
Then there's the literally sickening sugar-sweet plot, unique among R&H major musicals, which usually have some kind of dramatic bite. Oh, well, they weren't the only ones to waste great numbers on a lousy book. Enjoy it for the justly famous numbers (forget Do-Re-Mi; it goes on forever, and the fifth degree is "sol," not "sew") and for the luscious scene where the captain and Maria dance the Laendler as a pas de deux.