A Girl Asked Me to Take Her to See this Film on a Date. I Broke the Relationship.

Rating: 1/10 (8 June 2005)

One commentator has said:
"When I was young I used to picture the audience for this film as slightly deaf old women in surgical stockings and bad hats, and my attitude still holds."
Does he know how close to the truth that statement is?
I remember as a kid being dragged to see this film by the family. I had already heard some of the music from this film on the radio, and it was so sickly sweet that I had to continuously fight the urge to vomit. So I was dreading to see the film.
So I sat in the stalls of the Dominion in Tottenham Court Road with the family, which included the aunts in the surgical stockings and bad hats, some of whom had seen the film as many as six - yes, six - times and had somehow resisted the urge to throw themselves off Charing Cross Bridge into the murky waters of the endless mighty Thames.All my worst fears were confirmed. This film was as bad as I thought it would be.
From the moment that Julie Andrews first appeared on the screen singing that sickly song, and having to endure the shrieks of the Reverend Mother, we are introduced to the dysfunctional Von Trapp family.
It did have one benefit. I began to grow up fast after that, so that I would be big enough not to be dragged by the family to watch Von Crapp like this.
Judging by some of the later parts played by Julie Andrews, I got the impression, rightly or wrongly, that even SHE realised she had made a mistake in appearing in this film, and was taking on ever more raunchier roles to compensate.
Apart from the story, the dialogue, the lyrics, the conception, there is nothing technically wrong with this film. But if you have any intelligence at all you will not bear to watch it. As to those who have seen it many times, they all have one thing in common: they are all Roman Catholic. Many of them even think that this is a religious film. (Oh, they do. They do.)
Finally, to those who have read my summary above, and who do not believe that I turned down a date with a good-looking girl because she wanted to see The Sound of Music, I can say that that is what happened. Literally. I like my women to have something upstairs. This girl clearly had not.