THE BOY FRIEND (1971)

When it opened in the 1950s, Sandy Wilson’s pastiche ‘20s musical seemed a modest charmer, especially in its year’s run on B’way with a debuting teenage Julie Andrews in the lead as a rich, popular schoolgirl who falls hard for a poor bellboy who turns out to be . . . even richer than she is!*  Happy Ending!  Purposefully twee and silly, Wilson was poking gentle fun at Jerome Kern/P.G. Wodehouse Princess Theatre Musicals that poked fun at themselves.  So, by the time director Ken Russell got his hands on the material, it needed bucking up.  Having super model Twiggy in her first film helped (she could sing & dance to pleasant effect), but his big idea was to graft 1930s Busby Berkeley style and the plot of 42ND STREET onto things.  Now, a backstager, the show within a show has Twiggy sub at the last moment for injured star Glenda Jackson.  Plus, a Hollywood director in the audience who doesn’t see the schlepdreigel production before him, but the film he envisions in his mind’s eye.  Indeed, just about everyone in the cast has their own idea of what’s happening on stage visualized by Russell in bludgeoning detail.  This meta -musical idea might have worked, but Russell has zero interest in unifying presentation or running the simple story in a readable manner.  It’s all excessive thrusts & parries in a variety of styles meant to WOW us.  Every number a ‘Numbo.’  Two of them connect: a seaside swimming routine and a Parisian Pierrot act done as if it were silhouette puppetry.  (Some classy work under tough conditions from cinematographer David Watkins.)  But even here, the actors work too hard to keep an emotional distance and not ingratiate.  It’s Busby Berkeley meets Brecht.  A man of patterns, pulchritude, perversion & pudenda, Berkeley hardly knew a dance step and didn’t need them.  Truly inimical, and quite beyond Ken’s ken.  Only the young Tommy Tune, a cross between eccentric ‘30s specialty dancer Hal Le Roy and BIG BANG THEORY’s Jim Parsons comes across.  Rail thin & towering, he’s not much helped by second-rate material and Russell’s lack of visual legato or invisible editing technique.  But at least he has a reason for being up there.  Something woefully lacking elsewise.

DOUBLE-BILL: Maybe Russell was simply overwhelmed with work in a year that also saw THE MUSIC LOVERS and THE DEVILS hitting theaters.  He’s just as extreme, but far more satisfying in next year’s difficult/worthwhile SAVAGE MESSIAH/’72.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Master of musicals Stanley Donen’s affectionate spoofing in MOVIE MOVIE/’78, much closer to the mark.

CONTEST: *Andrews, whose ‘20s pastiche film musical was THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE/’67, is tangentially involved here.  Explain the connection to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choosing.