The King and I

Plot synopsis:
=== Act 1 ===
In 1862, a strong-willed, widowed schoolteacher, Anna Leonowens, arrives in Bangkok, Siam (later known as Thailand) at the request of the King of Siam to tutor his many children. Anna's young son, Louis, fears the severe countenance of the King's prime minister, the Kralahome, but Anna refuses to be intimidated ("I Whistle a Happy Tune"). The Kralahome has come to escort them to the palace, where they are expected to live – a violation of Anna's contract, which calls for them to live in a separate house. She considers returning to Singapore aboard the vessel that brought them, but goes with her son and the Kralahome.
Several weeks pass, during which Anna and Louis are confined to their palace rooms. The King receives a gift from the king of Burma, a lovely slave girl named Tuptim, to be one of his many wives. She is escorted by Lun Tha, a scholar who has come to copy a design for a temple, and the two are secretly in love. Tuptim, left alone, declares that the King may own her, but not her heart ("My Lord and Master"). The King gives Anna her first audience. The schoolteacher is a part of his plan for the modernization of Siam; he is impressed when she already knows this. She raises the issue of her house with him, he dismisses her protests and orders her to talk with his wives. They are interested in her, and she tells them of her late husband, Tom ("Hello, Young Lovers"). The King presents her new pupils; Anna is to teach those of his children whose mothers are in favor with him – several dozen – and is to teach their mothers as well. The princes and princesses enter in procession ("March of the Royal Siamese Children"). Anna is charmed by the children, and formality breaks down after the ceremony as they crowd around her.
Anna has not given up on the house, and teaches the children proverbs and songs extolling the virtues of home life, to the King's irritation. The King has enough worries without battling the schoolteacher, and wonders why the world has become so complicated ("A Puzzlement"). The children and wives are hard at work learning English ("The Royal Bangkok Academy"). The children are surprised by a map showing how small Siam is compared with the rest of the world ("Getting to Know You"). As the crown prince, Chulalongkorn, disputes the map, the King enters a chaotic schoolroom. He orders the pupils to believe the teacher but complains to Anna about her lessons about "home". Anna stands her ground and insists on the letter of her contract, threatening to leave Siam, much to the dismay of wives and children. The King orders her to obey as "my servant"; she repudiates the term and hurries away. The King dismisses school, then leaves, uncertain of his next action. Meanwhile, Lun Tha comes upon Tuptim, and they muse about having to hide their relationship ("We Kiss in a Shadow").
In her room, Anna replays the confrontation in her mind, her anger building ("Shall I Tell You What I Think of You?"). Lady Thiang, the King's head wife, tells Anna that the King is troubled by his portrayal in the West as a barbarian, as the British are being urged to take over Siam as a protectorate. Anna is shocked by the accusations – the King is a polygamist, but he is no barbarian – but she is reluctant to see him after their argument. Lady Thiang convinces her that the King is deserving of support ("Something Wonderful"). Anna goes to him and finds him anxious for reconciliation. The King tells her that the British are sending an envoy to Bangkok to evaluate the situation. Anna "guesses" – the only guise in which the King will accept advice – that the King will receive the envoy in European style, and that the wives will be dressed in Western fashion. Tuptim has been writing a play based on a book that Anna has lent her, Uncle Tom's Cabin, that can be presented to the guests. News is brought to the King that the British are arriving much earlier than thought, and so Anna and the wives are to stay up all night to prepare. The King assembles his family for a Buddhist prayer for the success of the venture and also promises before Buddha that Anna will receive her own house "as provided in agreement, etc., etc."
=== Act 2 ===
The wives are dressed in their new European-style gowns, which they find confining ("Western People Funny"). In the rush to prepare, the question of undergarments has been overlooked, and the wives have practically nothing on underneath their gowns. When the British envoy, Sir Edward Ramsay, arrives and gazes at them through a monocle, they are panicked by the "evil eye" and lift their skirts over their heads as they flee. Sir Edward is diplomatic about the incident. When the King is called away, it emerges that Sir Edward is an old flame of Anna's, and they dance in remembrance of old times, as Edward urges her to return to British society. The King returns and irritably reminds them that dancing is for after dinner.
As final preparations for the play are made, Tuptim steals a moment to meet with Lun Tha. He tells her he has an escape plan, and she should be ready to leave after the performance ("I Have Dreamed"). Anna encounters them, and they confide in her ("Hello, Young Lovers", reprise). The play ("Small House of Uncle Thomas", narrated ballet) is presented in a Siamese ballet-inspired dance. Tuptim is the narrator, and she tells her audience of the evil King Simon of Legree and his pursuit of the runaway slave Eliza. Eliza is saved by Buddha, who miraculously freezes a river and conceals her in snow. Buddha then causes the river to melt, drowning King Simon and his hunting party. The anti-slavery message is blunt.
After the play, Sir Edward reveals that the British threat has receded, but the King is distracted by his displeasure at Tuptim's rebellious message. After Sir Edward leaves, Anna and the King express their delight at how well the evening went, and he presents her with a ring. Secret police report that Tuptim is missing. The King realizes that Anna knows something; she parries his inquiry by asking why he should care: Tuptim is just another woman to him. He is delighted; she is at last understanding the Siamese perspective. Anna tries to explain to him the Western customs of courtship and tells him what it is like for a young woman at a formal dance ("Shall We Dance?"). He demands that she teach him the dance. She does, and in that dance they experience and express a love for each other that they can never speak aloud. They are interrupted by the Kralahome. Tuptim has been captured, and a search is on for Lun Tha. The King resolves to punish Tuptim, though she denies she and Lun Tha were lovers. Anna tries to dissuade him, but he is determined that her influence shall not rule, and he takes the whip himself. He turns to lash Tuptim, but under Anna's gaze is unable to swing the whip, and hurries away. Lun Tha is found dead, and Tuptim is dragged off, swearing to kill herself; nothing more is heard about her. Anna asks the Kralahome to give her ring back to the King; both schoolteacher and minister state their wish that she had never come to Siam.
Several months pass with no contact between Anna and the King. Anna is packed and ready to board a ship leaving Siam. Chulalongkorn arrives with a letter from the King, who has been unable to resolve the conflicts within himself and is dying. Anna hurries to the King's bedside and they reconcile. The King persuades her to take back the ring and to stay and assist the next king, Chulalongkorn. The dying man tells Anna to take dictation from the prince, and instructs the boy to give orders as if he were King. The prince orders the end of the custom of kowtowing that Anna hated. The King grudgingly accepts this decision. As Chulalongkorn continues, prescribing a less arduous bow to show respect for the king, his father dies. Anna kneels by the late King, holding his hand and kissing it, as the wives and children bow or curtsey, a gesture of respect to old king and new.

Tags: romantic

Review:
The producers have attempted to bring the story down to a kid's level by eliminating key elements from the original and introducing new characters that would make Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein both turn over in their graves.
Then there is the onslaught of cute animals including a monkey, an elephant and a panther that constantly save the King by hurling mangoes at the villains.
Many of these new characters are directly stolen from Disney films, especially from `Aladdin.'  If all this was not enough, we even get a scene where the King rides in a hot air balloon that is powered by a panther riding a bicycle mounted to a propeller.
Admittedly, seeing this was an animated feature I was fully expecting some liberties to be taken, but I was not expecting a rewriting of the entire story.The film's worst moments come during the musical scenes.
I suggest either the original drama >Anna and the King<, a rather adult approach with much darkness that fits the original story, or the more accessible live-action musical >The King and I<, which has the benefits of Richard Rogers' musical score.
It looks much like an attempt to capitalize upon either >Beauty and the Beast< or >Aladdin<, both infinitely better.This animated film is a disaster from the start.
The animals are excessively cute and unrealistic, including the sterotypical 'mischievous monkey' and the King's cuddly pet panther(?), not to mention some of the most unrealistic elephants that we have ever seen and the snakes that the evil Prime Minister conjures out of vines.
In the past year I saw a parody of "Titanic" on Saturday Night Live's TV Funhouse, entitled "Titey," the joke being that Disney had turned the story into a big joke, with a singing ship, an evil ice berg, and sea animals that come together to rescue the poor sinking ship, helping it land safely in America.The funny part is, if those writers gave the same treatment to "The King and I" the result would have been this movie.
Do you know that Thai people love and respect our royal family, especially Prince Chulalongkorn was our King Rama V who did many good things for Thailand?
But all they talked about when the thing was over was the guy who kept losing his teeth (remember that from the original Broadway musical?), and the mango throwing monkey.
Ironically, the director did "The Fox and the Hound" and "The Black Cauldron".So yeah, a major disappointment from this film, the animation doesn't have much detail, the story has no plot and the characters had the personality of sandpaper.
However, the King's panther Rama was the only character I found likable.Well, to wrap this up, this is a really boring film, like the summary says, it should have been adapted by the real Disney, not some other company trying to imitate Disney..
I don't think this is nothing copied off of the original classic King and I but here are some subjects about it:The animation was beautiful (almost like a Disney animation film).
The characters are unfavorable.Skip this floppy animated version and watch the original King and I..
Disastrous attempt to copy the Disney formula of adding magical bad guys and silly animal sidekicks -- TO A TRUE STORY?
This clearly was an attempt to reach a new audience, a late-1990s audience that's seen years of _Aladdin_, _The Little Mermaid_, _Pocahontas_ (oddly enough, all long-lived stories that were messed with at some level in the interest of making a movie about them) and I think they connected on that level.The animation was average at best, and Quicktime-Movie-running-on-a-386-bad at worst.
Perhaps I've been spoiled by Disney features or the wonderful Fleischer material of the 1930s.The musical numbers were buried under visuals that didn't match-- I agree with the other posters who complained about the scene in which "Whistle a Happy Tune" was sung-- and some of the 1990s devices such as the cute animals and the martial arts demonstrations simply left me longing to see the original film again.But that's me.I'm renting the original movie for my kids to see which they prefer; this is more an experiment in learning what reaches them as opposed to the appalled father saying "Good Lord, what an abomination!
:-) What we can do is introduce them to quality and see if it takes.If you are reading this before seeing the movie, take all the comments in these postings in the proper spirit; don't expect a remake of something that's too wonderful to be remade properly (so why would a studio even consider bothering with a line-by-line/scene-by-scene animated "mirror" version?) but don't expect something lower than horrible.
What I see that I considered as the adult themes and contents in the 1956 version are 1.) Anna and The King (both portrayed by Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner) friendship turned into a complicated love affair.
For parents how would you explain that to your children " Ummm, The King likes to sleep around and ends up having a bunch of kids?".
When I was little kid before they even thought about the cartoon version (flashbacks, again) and remembering how much I drooled over Brynner.
You don't want your kids to have these "weird" thoughts about the characters, it is too early to think that way.
Despite that this storyline is against the history origin and a slight different remake version of both musical and live-action 1956 film adaptations until this animated remake film received lots of bad reviews, as a critic, I just felt like praising this film's animation whether it is Disney-like or not.
So if you are into animation and drawing body proportions and movements, at least this movie is enjoyable and I love this happy ending where nobody died and they turn this animated adaptation into a fairy tale with that kind of happy endings where Tuptim and the Prince lived happily ever after and got married and the King lived instead of dying of illness.I love the reflection and animation effects and as well as the 3D-like hot air balloon which I thought it looks cel-shaded computer-like animation since it moves smoothly like it was 3D computer animated and looking cel-shaded.I love all of the background settings details and they look very well rendered.If you don't like this movie, don't unless if you are into happy endings and into animation and stuff..
Now watching it, the people who made this film should have just not bothered.This 1999 version of The King and I is abominable on almost every level.
The less said about those awful animal sidekicks the better.It tries so hard to compete with the Disney films of the time without possessing any respect for the audience.
`The King And I' It's weird to me that Warner Brothers, after seeing competitors like Disney and Dreamworks raise the bar of animation so high, would sit there and be content that their films look like Saturday morning cartoon rejects.
The result turned out to be "The King and I"; and in its 1999 version, produced at Richard Rich's Rich Animation Studios in partnership with Nest Entertainment --- the creative team behind "The Swan Princess" --- there were quite serious flaws, the most important of which was unquestionably the simple truth that "The King and I" has, almost from the moment 20th Century-Fox's movie version of the Rodgers & Hammerstein legend was first released, pretty much been doomed to remain anathema among the people of Thailand, for whom the King of Siam is an historic figure worthy of being held sacrosanct.
Well, first things first, I believe that moviegoers went into this animated "King and I" expecting the awesome, unique, one-of-a-kind animation which for nearly forty years was at the heart of every Rankin/Bass Production.
It seems to me that The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, by arrangement with whom this film had been prepared, had wanted to support Mr. Rankin's dream; once the animated "King and I" flopped, unfortunately, it was clear that they could not support such a concept for any reason.
Some scenes were word-for-word from the original, and you can tell that the guy who's the voice of the king was desperately trying to sound like Yul Brynner (and failed big time).
My simplest advice for those who want their kids to see a version of "The King and I": show them Yul, they'll thank you when they're older..
Any resemblance to the original film essentially ends with a young English widow coming to Siam to become a tutor to the King's children.
The rest of the casting, alas, is on about the same level.I'm sure that kids, and parents, too, would react a lot more favorably to the classic 1956 film, with Brynner and Deborah Kerr, than they would to this ridiculous, multi-colored mess which has the audacity to call itself "The King and I." If the families of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II ever decide to sue the producers of this odious mess, I am definitely in their corner..
One of the worst animated films I have seen in a long time.
And secondly when I'm doing this review, I am not going to compare this film to the 1956 film because i have not seen that version.So after a long time, I decided, why not, let's give the king and I (1999) a try.
I know this is a kid's cartoon but come on, there could have been a better way to kill that thing.The sing alongs also don't save it and the music throughout could have been so much more.
And the thing which really bugged me throughout was the animation and change of scenes.For example in one scene, we see the main villain and this fat guy who is his assist are seen talking near a bridge.
There are many other poor animation tactics which go on about throughout this film, but I'm not going to go into it.The only two things I thought were done OK is these two moments with the main villain and the king.
Now going back to it just recently, I suddenly think it's one of the worst films I have seen in quite some time.
The musical was based on Margaret Landon's novel "Anna and the King of Siam" (1944), a work of fiction.This animated piece of c*@P is not only an insult to anyone with a brain that can read a history book, it pours mud on the work of a talented team that created the original musical.Anna Leon-Owens was a shameless self-promoter and outright liar (I read all her disrespectful error filled books).
Warner Brothers animated version of `The King and I' is nothing more than a shameless butchering of Rogers and Hammerstine's musical masterpiece.
The producers of this travesty have seen fit to bring this classic story down to a child's level with very little of the original work making it to the screen.
Much of the original has been replaced with a senseless story of a wizard and his fat henchman trying to kill the King so they can rule Siam.
With this animated film, Warner Brothers have vandalized a great musical for the sake of making a quick buck from parents who care nothing about the quality of entertainment they take their kids to see..
As someone who hasn't seen the original 1956 version of The King and I, I still think that after watching the magically confused Swan Princess, this follow-up by Richard Rich and Rankin/Bass does even not even live up to the mediocrity of The Swan Princess.
This relationship rips off Aladdin in two ways, adding too many cute animal characters such as giving a pet monkey to Anna's son just so he can give Master Little a hard time, the relationship between Chulalonghorn and the slave girl, and an extremely hammy version of Jafar called the Kralahorn, who just performs evil magic tricks using his magic migraines just for the sake of it.
I mean, aside from the casting choice of the late Miranda Richardson as Anna, and the music and the artwork, I didn't think this was a very good remake at all.Overall, this just isn't a good movie, but the songs are okay.
Just stick with the original 1946 movie adaptation of the Broadway musical, or just watch the live-action movie, "Anna and the King" that has Jodie Foster and Chow Yung-Fat as the titular characters and go buy the soundtrack, instead.But, don't even bother trying to waste your time and effort in watching this movie.
Even if you're trying to introduce your kids or younger relatives to the story of "Anna and the King".
In this colossal waste of time, Warner Brothers studios removes the dramatic sequences in this classic musical and shortens the songs, a minor trade-in, replaced by pages of useless action (amazing how the 50-year-old king can hang upside down on his toenails and still manage to save a wispy slave girl he was previously in hatred about.
It has very good music, lovely ambiance, likable characters and cute story.
It has very good music, lovely ambiance, likable characters and cute story.
It has very good music, lovely ambiance, likable characters and cute story.
This cartoon remake of the 1956 musical 'The King and I' is frankly not worth watching.
The songs are catchy and bring a sense of the original "King and I" to a cartoon.
Truthfully, the best way to enjoy this movie is if you've never seen the original 'The King and I'..
Had they simply followed the original story, this probably would have been a lovely film.
i can't stand the way people hate on this movie, the story is nice, the artwork is nice, so is the music and setting.
We had a great night watching this sweet movie and a memory that will last a lifetime.This family friendly animated film shouldn't be compared with the 1956 version.
Now there will be less movies like this.The animation was choppy and off, the voices were horrid, the dialog was so standard it killed me (try counting how many times that kid said "father" in a dramatic voice), and the "humor" was too lame even for kids.I think we should all go Fahrenheight 451 on this movie and burn them all so this story will never be viewed in its butchered form.Please do not ever see this movie, not even for free..
Unfortunately this movie only serves to reinforce the negative stereotypes and simplistic views that exist in relation to the reign of King Mongkut and this cartoon must rank as one of the worst films I have ever seen.The musical "The King And I" is historically misleading and can be perceived by some as culturally negative but at least it gave King Mongkut some admirable qualities and was of an extremely high quality.
All the good things that King Mongkut achieved for his country and the fact that he actually was a human being seems to be missing from this movie.And of course Anne Leonowens is perfect in every way and brings just what these "savages" need to be educated in this film.Plus we now have a bad guy who has magical powers with his rather stereotypical and rather offensive portrayal and a whole lot of assorted animals that can talk and so on.
Good idea to have the King's son a studly young Prince instead of another adolescent, like Anna's foppish brat Louis.
I found myself singing along with a few of the songs ('I Whistle A Happy Tune', 'Getting to Know You' and 'Shall We Dance') which I remember from my younger days.Some of the characters may have been unnecessary like Master Little, the elephant and the monkey, but its their antics that keep the young ones entertained.
Someone has his eye on the throne, the Kralahome and his plan involves Anna, as well as the unsuspecting kingMessage: You do not know everything.My thoughts: I have watched this twice since we bought it recently and I like it about as much as I did when I was younger (when we borrowed it).
In the film, I also like the characters and the relationships between them, especially the prince's and servant's as well as Anna's and the king's.
The King and I definitely isn't a family-friendly animated movie at all.It's too stupid for any adults unfortunate enough to have to watch it.
Full of cultural and racial stereotypes, disgustingly cute and unrealistic animals, lame singing and an array of unlikable characters, this is one movie you won't want to sit through with your kids, believe me.
Since the producers already tried turning the story into something out of a Disney movie or Scooby-Doo episode, they could at least try to make the characters interesting!
It's almost as bad as that stupid Ferngully movie and is probably one of the worst animated movies I've seen in some time..
Anna and the King is annoying too.The movie starts when they are on the way to Siam, the the Kralahome is now an evil sorcerer with magic powers for evil and conjures up a serpent.
I have absolutely no problem with that, since we must remember that this is a movie intended for children, who can't understand many of the adult themes in the original story, like the harem, the 109 children, and the death of the king.
For a story like this to work for children, you have to have new and exciting characters, and you absolutely have to have a great villain too.
I thought the movie was just wonderful, and I loved the fact that they've used most of the music from the original.
The King and I is a classic musical that should never be remade, and not with the most offensive weapon in the industry: animal sidekicks and characters only plonked over for comic relief.
I never really liked the story of 'the king and I' because it was set with a lot of drama with a clash of cultures.