Excellent syrup

Rating: Null/10 (23 July 1999)

The Sound of Music is an excellent movie, but one with big problems. First, the good news. Director Robert Wise, who's had an awesome career, is in top form: the movie is very well made and looks terrific throughout. The opening sequence is truly wonderful, with the beautiful Julie Andrews singing at 10,000' without gasping for breath. Christopher Plummer is good.
Much of the music is good. My favorite numbers are "Do, Re, Mi" and "The Lonely Goatherd." Both are staged very well and are extremely hummable. Here's a fantasy of mine for "Do, Re, Mi." Part of the number is done along a road with a white fence. The fence has five horizontal rails, which reminded me of the staff on sheet music. The kids should have been positioned on the fence like notes on the sheet music, matching what was being sung. But they didn't do that.
The wedding is impressively staged.
But you come inevitably to the flaws, mostly ones of sentimentality. The song "So Long, Farewell" is awful. And its staging is bad. At the end, when all the dinner guests wave good-night to the kids, I want to throw up. "Maria," though tuneful, is a dumb song.
There are soft spots in the cast. Eleanor Parker as the baroness is stagy. Charmian Carr as Liesl is stagy, and particularly bad in the dialogue leading up to "You are Sixteen" at the gazebo. She had a deservedly brief film career, making only one other movie, and it was for TV.
Let's not forget the plot. This pretends to be a true story. But ... the von Trapps did not flee Austria one step ahead of the Nazis, climbing all those mountains (with the grass waving due to the helicopter carrying the camera) -- they just left. So all that stuff after the music festival is fiction. I believe, but I'm not sure, that the Nazis did not try to force Capt. von Trapp back into the armed forces, either.
As good as Julie Andrews is (and I'm a big fan), there are some awkward moments. After she runs back to the convent in the beginning, she runs past this group of nuns, and does a lousy double-take when she's caught. Then she gives a bad speech about how nice it was in the country, "... and the sky was so blue ..." It rings hollow. Much later, her speech to Peggy Wood explaining why she left the von Trapps and returned to the convent is weepy and sounds forced.
But in spite of the flaws, the movie is still a winner.