Pal Joey
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Movie Reviews of Pal Joey
Movie Review: it is good but not great...
Summary: 3 Stars
I love Sinatra and Rita and Kim are right at the top with me but I have to be honest. I was a bit disappointed with this film. It left me rather cold and bored...Movie Review: Diluted and dull
Summary: 2 Stars
I do not like Sinatra, and as someone once said, Joey is the role he was born to play. A self-important little heel. I think he had a very slight singing voice (with orchestral delusions of grandeur, look at the arrangement of his "Softly, As I Leave You") and I think he was a megalomaniac. Also, before I drop the subject, the tune in this flick that floored all the other reviewers here ("The Lady Is A Tramp") was written for a woman and has many more, and many cleverer choruses, and was written for "Babes in Arms," not "Pal Joey." Rita Hayworth (whose character, Vera Simpson, was just rich on the stage) plays a former stripper, not a former singer. And her number, "Zip!" has words in it not even written by Hart! The plot of the show (par for Hollywood) was bowdlerized, rewritten and destroyed for the flick, and left simplistic and with most of its songs gone. Good ones too. I've read O'Hara's libretto and I've heard the score. The film is a colorful diversion (like the films of Porter's "Can-Can" and Loesser's "Guys and Dolls," both also with Sinatra, both also eviscerated and abridged, though Loesser fared best of the three), it'll kill an hour and a half, Rodgers' tunes are done well (as well as non-singers can do them), O'Hara and Hart are rewritten with only the bare bones left, but in 2003, who really cares anymore. Rodgers & Hart will be around when this shadow of one of their best shows (almost all their shows were their best shows, they were gems, but this one had a script by John O'Hara, sigh, what a waste) is forgotten. Watch it, feel good (if you can stand Sinata; Novak and Hayworth are talented and beautiful), and then forget it.Movie Review: Great Rita Hayworth
Summary: 2 Stars
Rita Hayworth is the only reason for watching this film, and Kim Novak is good. The rest is not good..the script of the original Pal Joey has been completely re-written to accomodate Sinatra, and this means the thinnest of plots, the transposition of songs, elimination of numbers that make him look bad, and the suits and pants with football padding to disguise thinness and age.
This was the musical Sinatra wanted; he was sure he could carry a film, certainly a musical film. He had seen M Brando take the lead in Guys and Dolls, and he reacted negatively toward Barndo all through the shoot of Guys and Dolls. Thank God Brando secured that lead!
Sinatra's voice in Pal Joey is very bad, his style of acting is no style at all, and his acting, even on its one note foundation, is excruciating. He needed Gene Kelly and others to fill in when he made MGM musicals; he was never a star, and Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak eclipse him in every scene,proving that point.
Too bad, because this was a very good show, on Broadway, with Gene Kelly, who should have done this picture, or Marlon Brando, certainly Brando.
See this for Rita and her number, Zipped, and forget the rest.
See also, Kim, sing (dubbing)My Funny Valentine, and how it gets ruined as you watch Sinatra's reactions to it.
Movie Review: What a Dog!
Summary: 2 Stars
Musicals are historically slight in the plot department, and this movie is no exception. Three stars: one fading, one rising and one coasting do not help matters either.
Rita is the fading star. It was painful for me to watch the once dazzling love goddess reduced to playing the controlling widow. The make up department probably had to work overtime trying to cover the circles under her eyes, and her hair and costumes are just bad. Novak is the rising star, although I don't get the 50's obsession with bubble headed, busty, bleach blond bimbos. It would help if she could act, but sadly her range is very limited. I truly believe they added the dog to help make her character sympathetic, since she was unable to convey it herself. Then there is Frank just coasting on his charm and cool. Doesn't seem plausible that a hep cat like him, who could bag any "doll", "dame" or "mouse?", would fall for either of these gals.
Anyway, I gave it 2 stars because of Snuffy the dog. He stole every scene he was in. Although that wasn't too difficult to do in such a dog of a movie.
Movie Review: Great songs in a tepid film.....
Summary: 2 Stars
Time was, we could find womanizers funny. But no longer. Frank Sinatra is a bit of a cad here, as he toys with the affections of 2 lovely women--Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak. The movie starts, in fact, as Frank ("Pal Joey") is being run out of town by the police, for trifling with the affections of an underage girl. Settled in San Francisco, Frank uses Rita to finance his new supper club, but cannot give up his star act, Kim Novak. All very shallow, and a rather nice (sweetened up) ending.Not to deny the power of the songs--Rodgers and Hart at their best.
Not to deny the beauty of the Cinematography--glorious limpid shots of 50's San Francisco.
But that plot!