Product: Funny Girl [VHS] (1968)
Rating: 3.0
A Bit of a Letdown
There is absolutely no question that Barbara Streisand made a name for herself in this film. She is wonderful, and the first hour or so is fun. But this musical treatment of Fanny Brice's life really creaks. In the first place, there are virtually no original musical numbers after the intermission! We are left with a recreation of Brice's Swan Lake parody (sans audience, so there's no real excitement or humor), a rather bland song called "Funny Girl" and Streisand singing the song Brice was known for, "My Man". In this pre-Sondheim era, I guess Jule Styne just couldn't come up with any toe tappers as the Brice-Arnstein relationship fizzles. In the second place, Omar Sharif as Nicky Arnstein was NOT inspired casting and the performance doesn't wear well over the years. The "You are Woman and I am Man" number is especially horrible, both in its phony coyness and its rather anachronistic view of male-female relations. Watch the first hour, with the wonderful "I'm the Biggest Star" and "People" numbers, and if you can brave the melodrama of the second half, fine, but don't expect any great musical numbers.