I do wish it did more for me. Maybe I’ll watch again some day, this time with my kids, which often helps me see movies through fresh eyes. I never made much time for older films as I was growing up, and I certainly still have a large gap in musicals that I hope to correct. For example, I haven’t actually seen My Fair Lady or The Sound of Music all the way through, and this comment at least gives me a little bit of a roadmap. I also have the book The Movie Musical by Jeanine Basinger, though she opens the book panning La La Land which soured me a little. Never heard of Roadshow! but just looked it up.

Richard Fleischer fans. Oh, right, that’s also just me and I slot readily enough under musical aficionado. (Though less the bloated 60s ones, which I’ve really only recently started slogging through. I think I come to film musicals from nearly the exact opposite direction most people do, because what got me into it was… well, La La Land is the uncool truth, but first MGM films from the 50s, then the Berkeleys and Astaire/Rogerses of the 30s, then with some reluctance the big Rodgers/Hammersteins and other “why the hell is this three hours long?” musicals of the 60s. I believe Brayton, for instance–and I think he’s more typical–tracks his path from an interest in actual Broadway, which I don’t possess, and so went naturally to the 60s first, then the 30s, then the 40s and 50s. Shook my whole worldview when he told me a few years back he’d never seen an Esther Williams, which he’s corrected since then, but hey, by the same token I’ve still never seen, like, Funny Girl or Hello Dolly or even more than a couple of Elvis Presley musicals.) Anyway, Richard Fleischer rules, though this is not a movie that says “Richard Fleischer” stylistically except in the way it’s sort of unhurried, which I think works for it right up until that disaster of a romance which exists solely because it “worked” in My Fair Lady even though that is, speaking frankly, a fundamental misreading of the relationship in My Fair Lady albeit a shockingly common one. (Seriously, I don’t know how anyone manages to see the 1964 film’s Henry Higgins as even potentially heterosexual.) Still have never read Pictures At a Revolution as I perceive a strong probability of being annoyed by it, though I’ll note that Fleischer’s autobiography is irritatingly sparse on the subject of the actual production of Dolittle so at some point I’m gonna have to, unless Roadshow!’s section on Dolittle gets the juicier stuff across just as well.

As for the rest of Doctor Dolittle, I appreciate that you approached it with an open mind and a true generosity of spirit and… still didn’t like it, but I think rather fairly. Though I find it baffling that it could have a lower reputation (in some cases “an even lower reputation”) amongst the death era of the musical than e.g. Camelot, Gigi, or Paint Your Wagon, and at least slightly confusing how Mary Poppins is completely different enough to be rated WAY higher. I guess if you go to Old Hollywood musicals for the actual music, maybe, and I mostly concede the judgment that Dolittle is pretty bad at being a musical. (I do like “Talk To the Animals,” though maybe not exactly “as a song.”)