Aladdin (1992) [Platinum Edition] – DVD

October 5, 2004Posted in1990s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Romance

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A+
screenplay by John Musker & Ron Clements and Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio
directed by John Musker & Ron Clements

Aladdincapby Bill Chambers Jeffrey Katzenberg may have revived the American animated feature while he was at Disney, but only one of the hits his reign yielded is worth a second viewing. Where 1989's The Little Mermaid and especially 1991's nauseating Beauty and the Beast tried to pass themselves off as Golden Age Disney (1937 (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)-1950 (Cinderella), for argument's sake), before a certain stateliness loosened its grip on the house style, 1992's Aladdin took its cue from Uncle Walt's twilight years, the Sixties, when he was interested in telling–as he geared up to pass the torch, perhaps–mentor stories (The Sword in the Stone and The Jungle Book) and pop culture had finally caught up with his incongruous predilections for psychedelia and bohemianism. It's a risk to emulate the period considered the birth of the studio's Dark Ages, and Aladdin is the least spurious movie of Disney's renaissance because of it.

Shark Tale (2004)

October 1, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Theatrical, Will Smith

*½/****
screenplay by Michael J. Wilson and Rob Letterman
directed by Vicky Jenson, Bibo Bergeron, Rob Letterman

Sharktaleby Walter Chaw Shark Tale is a soulless platform for the Will Smith persona, here voicing a duplicitous social climber called Oscar who disdains his legacy as a car wash (make that “whale wash”) employee in favour of a feckless dreamlife of bling and adulation. His wishes come true when a series of unfortunate events constructs the impression that little Oscar has slain Frankie (Michael Imperioli), favoured son of Godfather Don Lino (Robert De Niro), with Lino’s “other” son, Lenny (Jack Black), still missing. Dubbed “Shark Slayer” by all of a submerged fish-tropolis, Oscar finds himself a celebrity spokesman, complete with a posse composed of agent Sykes (Martin Scorsese), grouper groupie Lola (Angelina Jolie), and the girl-Friday-next-door with the heart of gold, Angie (Renée Zellweger).

Home on the Range (2004) – DVD

September 24, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Western

*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
written and directed by Will Finn & John Sanford

by Walter Chaw It opens with a musical number and a rabbit with a peg leg–and what feels like days later, Home on the Range ends with an ear-splitting action sequence featuring Cuba Gooding Jr. typecast as an over-animated pack animal. Meanwhile, a crass two-dimensional cow is typecast as Roseanne, her prize heifer Maggie introduced onscreen udder-first: "Yeah, they're real, quit staring." Real nice. And the intrigue, such as it is, revolves around yodeling cattle rustler Alameda Slim (Randy Quaid) narrowing his sights on the bucolic Patch of Heaven ranch, no-kill home of stock chickens ("It's a chick thing," hardy har har), a duck, a goat, and some swine.

Kaena: The Prophecy (2003) + The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride (1998) [2-Disc Special Edition] – DVDs

September 20, 2004Posted in1990s, 2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, France, Musical, Romance, Sci-Fi

KAENA: THE PROPHECY
*/**** Image A Sound B Extras C
screenplay by Tarik Hamoine and Chris Delaporte
directed by Chris Delaporte

THE LION KING II: SIMBA'S PRIDE
½*/**** Image B Sound B- Extras C+
screenplay by Flip Kobler and Cindy Marcus
directed by Rob LaDuca & Darrell Rooney

by Walter Chaw There's a timorous, resonant quality to Kirsten Dunst's voice. It's amazing, really: it vibrates at a contralto as tense and lovely as a cello string drawn–I think it's her most attractive feature. She's tailor-made, then, to be a vocal performer, and finds herself as such in French filmmaker Chris Delaporte's plodding misfire of a movie Kaena: The Prophecy. Completely computer-animated, it's every bit as ugly and prosaic as its American cousin Ice Age (insomuch as it even includes a prehistoric-squirrel vignette towards the end) and obsessed with the jiggle dimensions of Kaena (or is that me, obsessed?), who must save her tree-world Axis from destruction at the hands of the evil Selenites (whose queen is voiced by Anjelica Huston). The story is so Joseph Campbell hero's journey-obsessed, so humourless and–how do I say it delicately?–Bakshi in its execution, that poor Dunst, in the title role, is wasted on plucky pronouncements and grunts of exertion as her .gif alter-ego leaps hither and yon.

The Three Musketeers (2004) – DVD

August 30, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Musical, Romance

Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers
*½/**** Image B Sound A- Extras C-
screenplay by Evan Spiliotopoulos and David Mickey Evans
directed by Donovan Cook

by Bill Chambers I must confess to something like a fetish for the joint screen ventures of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy, animation's answer to The Ritz Brothers. Their 1937 short Lonesome Ghosts is one of the essential building blocks in my love of cinema: I used to own a silent 8mm cartridge of it that could be viewed by handcranking a to-the-eye projector, and I unwittingly taught myself persistence of vision through bored frame-by-frame dissections of Mickey tiptoeing across the floor and Donald losing his cool. And as far as Mickey Mouse is concerned, he has Donald and Goofy in tow in his best colour outings–with a handful of exceptions (such as 1941's guardedly wistful The Nifty Nineties, or the Sorcerer's Apprentice sequence from Fantasia) that cast Mickey as an emblem of virtue rather than as a virtuous individual (thus seizing on the iconic resonance of the character's design), Mickey's solo shorts circa the war years are far too polite for their own good. Mercurial Donald and accident-prone Goofy add a much-needed pinch of salt. 

The Marx Brothers Collection – DVD

August 30, 2004Posted in1930s, 1940s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Music, Musical, Romance, Sports, Western
by Walter Chaw Hand in hand with their release of "The Tarzan Collection", Warner issues seven Marx Bros. films on five DVDs in a box set commemorating the comedy team's MGM output. Diving into the films in this collection, one finds the Marx Bros. in clear decline and willing--because the failure of their final picture at Paramount, Duck Soup, neutered a lot of their courage--to have Hollywood narratives foisted on their unrestrained chaos. A Night at the Opera is the last near-great Marx Bros. film, and it was their first at MGM; A Day at the Races followed before they…

The Princess Diaries (2001) [Special Edition – 2-Disc Collector’s Set] – DVD

August 13, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Romance, UK

*½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Sound B-
starring Anne Hathaway, Heather Matarazzo, Hector Elizondo, Mandy Moore
screenplay by Gina Wendkos, based on the novel by Meg Cabot
directed by Garry Marshall

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Mention the word "movies" and you're generally deluged with syrupy talk of "dreams" and "fantasy" and "adventure" and all that jazz, yet no matter how much you see this as the devalued coin of our entertainment-journalism realm, you have to admit that this image means an awful lot to an awful lot of people. The least a pop movie can do is live up to such reverence and be a holy object worthy of some worship, marshalling all the beauty and craft that has generally been Hollywood cinema's one redeeming virtue. But somehow, movies that dishonour this basic pact with the audience not only get made, but also ring the box-office bell to the tune of $108-million–that's how much The Princess Diaries managed to rake in during its 2001 theatrical run, despite the fact that it's as beautiful and dreamlike as a sheet of particle board. Once again, I am left with the dilemma: should I hate the filmmakers for generating this slop, or should I blame the audience for swilling it with pleasure?

Thunderbirds International Rescue Edition – DVD

August 11, 2004Posted in1960s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Family, Sci-Fi, UK

THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO (1966)
**½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
screenplay by Gerry Anderson & Sylvia Anderson
directed by David Lane

THUNDERBIRD 6 (1968)
*/**** Image A- Sound A- (DD)/A (DTS) Extras B+
screenplay by Gerry Anderson & Sylvia Anderson
directed by David Lane

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Why is it that "Thunderbirds", the marionette sci-fi TV series of 1960s vintage, exerts such weird fascination? Narratively, it's nothing to get excited about–just the usual conservative guff involving stiff-necked operators of sci-fi machinery, all of whom are given one trait each and are as pure in heart as they are heavy on exposition. One wants to make an obvious joke about the delivery being as wooden as the puppets, except that to do so would be missing the point: the erotics of the series are powerful specifically because everything is made of wood. The figures themselves are as rigid and rock-solid as the meticulously-designed machinery, making the stylization of the series total and more convincing than if it were superimposed over the documentary image of mere human flesh. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the two lavish and colourful movies made under the "Thunderbirds" brand, which, despite their formulaic tendencies, manage to hold our attention with a rich and affective sense of necrophilia.

Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London (2004) [Special Edition]; The Cheetah Girls (2003); Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004) – DVDs

July 21, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Germany, Music, Musical, Romance, Sci-Fi, UK

AGENT CODY BANKS 2: DESTINATION LONDON
*½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C-
starring Frankie Muniz, Anthony Anderson, Cynthia Stevenson, Daniel Roebuck
screenplay by Don Rhymer
directed by Kevin Allen

THE CHEETAH GIRLS
*/**** Image C Sound B Extras C-
starring Raven, Adrienne Bailon, Kiely Williams, Sabrina Bryan
screenplay by Alison Taylor, based on the series of books by Deborah Gregory
directed by Oz Scott

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Here’s how it works. The entertainment machine churns out low-quality wish-fulfillment fantasies for ‘tweens and teenagers, then print and web outlets assign grown men and women to review them. Yes, the logic behind this weird symbiosis is elusive, as few teenagers are savvy enough to read reviews and few adult reviewers (beyond the occasional junket flunky) are possibly going to recommend them to anyone else. But somebody somewhere must benefit from this arrangement, because I have two such discs staring me in the face right now: one is the Frankie Muniz vehicle Agent Cody Banks 2, the other is a Disney Channel TV movie called The Cheetah Girls. Both are fantasies of juvenile mastery, both are scrubbed clean and chaste, both seem to have been dashed off in an afternoon by drunken hacks, and I guarantee you that both will make anyone over the age of fifteen want to poke their eyes out with a metal spike. But that’s just me. I’m 31.

Disney’s Teacher’s Pet (2004) – DVD

July 14, 2004Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Musical

Teacher's Pet
***/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras C
screenplay by Bill Steinkellner & Cheri Steinkellner
directed by Timothy Björklund

by Walter Chaw If nothing else inventive, at the very least perverse, and at moments transcendently bizarre, the feature-length version of Disney Channel's "Teacher's Pet" is the brainchild of incorrigible animator/illustrator Gary Baseman. Think of his stuff as landing somewhere between R. Crumb and John Kricfalusi, all of bulging eyeballs and serpentine necks and skeletons a touch too eager to flee their skins. As the palette for a kid's entertainment, it's a bracing presumption that kids aren't stupid and, when given the choice, are capable of appreciating something outside the pale.

Jim Henson’s The Storyteller: The Complete Collection (1987) – DVD

June 16, 2004Posted in1980s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Horror, Muppets, Television, UK

Image C Sound B
“The Soldier and Death,” “Fearnot,” “The Luck Child,” “A Story Short,” “Hans My Hedgehog,” “The Three Ravens,” “Sapsorrow,” “The Heartless Giant,” “The True Bride”

by Walter Chaw For the span of nine delirious, enchanted episodes, “The Storyteller”, Jim Henson’s too-brief foray into mature anthology fantasy television, is gorgeous for its faithfulness to its mythic source material. Although the show’s longevity was certainly not helped by Henson’s hard-to-shake reputation as the benevolent primogenitor of “Sesame Street” and “The Muppet Show”, looking closer at Henson’s twin, sterling blue masterpieces The Muppet Movie (which he didn’t direct but definitely spearheaded) and The Dark Crystal reveals an artist steeped in a tradition of stung, existential melancholy. It’s easy to laugh at Kermit’s swamp lament or to dismiss, albeit less easily, the heroism of a soon-to-be-extinct species desperate to save a dying world that has all but snuffed them out, but from a perspective of legacy, it’s unwise to file Henson under “kid’s stuff” and leave well enough alone.

Around the World in 80 Days (2004)

June 15, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Disney, Family, Germany, Ireland, Jackie Chan, Schwarzenegger, Theatrical, UK, Western

½*/****
starring Jackie Chan, Steve Coogan, Robert Fyfe, Jim Broadbent
screenplay by David Titcher and David Benullo & David Andrew Goldstein, based on the novel by Jules Verne
directed by Frank Coraci

by Walter Chaw I’ve spent all the bile and disappointment I’m going to spend on Jackie Chan and what’s become of possibly the biggest star on the planet since his relocation to Hollywood. The rumour that this iteration of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days is to be Chan’s American swan song fuels the suspicion that even folks unfamiliar with the stuff that once earned Chan comparisons to Buster Keaton have begun to wish, like any majority culture member towards any outcast in any community, that they would stop taking the abuse and just go home. There must be a breaking point for Centurion scourers when pity (revulsion?) overtakes zeal for punishment, and the lengths to which Chan has voluntarily subjugated himself in the role of sidekick, comic relief, and yellow Stepin Fetchit have progressed beyond paternalistic bemusement into the raw area of salt into an open wound. The old Jackie Chan would have done this film and taken the role of Phileas Fogg–new Jackie Chan is content to be Kato. (Burt Kwouk’s, not Bruce Lee’s.) I was one of three Asians in a large high school in the middle of one of the whitest, most conservative states in the Union, where Chan bootlegs provided by one of South Federal’s Vietnamese groceries were among my few lifelines to a positive Chinese media role model amidst all the Long Duck Dongs, Short Rounds, and Ancient Chinese Secret launderers. For me now to feel more apathy than outrage at Chan selling out–dancing, singing, and acting the fool for the charity of the dominant culture–represents a death of a lot of things essential about me. It happens this way: the tide of ignorance wins out not with a bang but with a whimper.

Garfield (2004)

June 11, 2004Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Breckin Meyer, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Stephen Tobolowsky, Bill Murray
screenplay by Joel Cohen & Alec Sokolow, based on the Jim Davis comic strip
directed by Peter Hewitt

by Walter Chaw The sell-by date on a big-screen version of Jim Davis's flyblown syndicated comic strip-cum-merchandising empire "Garfield" expired at least twenty years ago, explaining in part why this Bill Murray-voiced abomination looks and acts so much like a giant hunk of rotten meat. It's corpse-soft, shambling along without much direction from its jellied brain, instantly alienating children with its snarky in-jokes about the cat's once-ubiquitous advertising appeal and pissing off adults with its die-cast dedication to being as worthless as possible. Parcelled off in little segments that approximate the rat-a-tat texture and length of the Sunday funnies but without the colour and for about seventeen times the price and potential headache, Garfield is trying so hard that it transfers its strain to anyone unfortunate enough to have gotten to the theatre after their first three choices were already sold-out.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

June 4, 2004Posted in****/****, 2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Family, Fantasy, Mystery, Theatrical, Time Travel, UK

****/****
starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Gary Oldman
screenplay by Steven Kloves, based on the novel by J.K. Rowling
directed by Alfonso Cuarón

Harrypotterprisonerazkabanby Walter Chaw There's real poetry in Alfonso Cuarón's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (hereafter Harry Potter 3), encapsulated in a moment where Harry mistakes a vision of himself for the phantom of his dead father. It's another of the Mexican director's magic-realism conversations about children coming of age emotionally and sexually, marking the picture as a lovely companion piece to his A Little Princess and identifying Cuarón as a gifted, eloquent voice for the rage and the rapture of adolescence. Opening with the 13-year-old Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) fiddling with his wand beneath a blanket, the theme of self-discovery unfolds along jagged, de-romanticized lines like the rough rhythms of an Irish lyric or, more to the heart of the matter, a Mexican folk tale, all of blood, dirt, and heroic fervour.

The Haunted Mansion (2003) [Widescreen] – DVD

May 26, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Eddie Murphy, Family, Horror, Mystery

**/**** Image A- Sound A+ Extras B
starring Eddie Murphy, Terence Stamp, Wallace Shawn, Marsha Thomason
screenplay by David Berenbaum
directed by Rob Minkoff

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Watching Eddie Murphy act his heart out in The Haunted Mansion, you have to ask yourself: how does he do it? How does he take a family-entertainment sausage like this and keep his enthusiasm up, filling out his time-tested family man with enough tics and asides to almost humanize him? Alas, the question is a moot point, because all that hard work is thrown away–Murphy is working in a vacuum, performing to the best of his ability a role that's completely beneath him. And that sums up the production in general: a lot of very talented people, from actors and technicians to designers and costumers, have knocked themselves out in the service of an advertisement for a theme park. The good work hasn't even got the wherewithal to reach beyond its material: gifted though they are, everybody involved with the production believes in the system to such an extent that the chances of artistic subversion on set were about nil. The result is surprisingly watchable but predictably unmoving.

Shrek 2 (2004)

May 18, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Eddie Murphy, Family, Fantasy, Japan, Romance, Theatrical

*½/****
screenplay by Andrew Adamson and Joe Stillman and J. David Stem & David N. Weiss
directed by Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury, Conrad Vernon

Shrek2by Walter Chaw Neither better nor worse than its predecessor, think of Shrek 2 as a step sideways–it doesn’t so much earn an audience as inherit one. A DreamWorks/PDI production, Shrek 2 transplants the first picture’s bitterness towards Disney, though the characters it skewers are in the public domain (Sleeping Beauty, the three little pigs, Hansel & Gretel, Pinocchio, and so on) and happen to be among the icons that Disney, by and large, never dishonoured. Without a viable target, then, the film is the kind of satire-less satire that mistakes being a self-congratulatory trivia game designed for beginning players for being a post-modern commentary on fairytales and, more specifically, the traditional Disney animated feature. There’s no sharpness inherent in making reference to Spider-Man or Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings saga (just as there was no sharpness in referencing The Matrix in the original), and imitation has no point of view, just a brief rush of pride and bemusement for folks generally unused to catching the allusions. To say the picture functions best for the lowest common denominator (note a trio of flatulence gags) isn’t entirely fair–but it’s accurate.

Give My Regards to Broad Street (1984) + Paul McCartney: The Music and Animation Collection – DVDs

May 13, 2004Posted in1980s, 1990s, 2000s, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Music, Short Films, UK

GIVE MY REGARDS TO BROAD STREET
**/**** Image B Sound B+
starring Paul McCartney, Bryan Brown, Ringo Starr, Barbara Bach
screenplay by Paul McCartney
directed by Peter Webb

PAUL McCARTNEY: THE MUSIC AND ANIMATION COLLECTION
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B+
directed by Geoff Dunbar

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Self-absorption is probably an occupational hazard at a certain level of fame: once the world lays itself at your feet, pelts its money at you, and replaces your mirrors with airbrushed portraits, it's well-nigh impossible not to be nudged a little closer to the realm of the narcissistic. Such is the case with Paul McCartney, who, having been canonized during his stint with The Beatles, apparently came to believe that anything involving his personage would be a celestial experience for all. The ego trips of 1984's Give My Regards to Broad Street and his more current forays into animation show a McCartney trapped in his own private hall of mirrors, one whose past musical triumphs are looking ever more distant from the tepid easy-listening of his present-day output.

Miracle (2004) [Widescreen] + Club Dread (2004) – DVDs

May 6, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Canada, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Horror, Sports, Thriller

MIRACLE
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring Kurt Russell, Patricia Clarkson, Noah Emmerich, Eddie Cahill
screenplay by Eric Guggenheim
directed by Gavin O'Connor

Broken Lizard's Club Dread
**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C+
starring Brittany Daniel, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Jordan Ladd
screenplay by Broken Lizard
directed by Jay Chandrasekhar

by Bill Chambers That it's well-cast, well-shot, and well-edited leads one to conclude that Miracle is, in fact, well-directed (by Tumbleweeds' Gavin O'Connor). It's therefore invaluable, really, as proof that nothing can save a hackneyed screenplay. The film, which recreates a rink-bound pissing contest between the U.S. and Soviet hockey teams at the 1980 Olympics that retroactively came to stand for a Seabiscuit-like national uplift, is so self-critiquing that watching it is purely a formality and only an occasional joy, not for its underdog intrigue, but for its technical proficiency and the ever-dependable Kurt Russell. (If there are better actors than Russell, there certainly aren't better movie stars.) Surmounting a number of aesthetic obstacles, including a moptop that looks scalped from his character in The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, Russell skillfully essays real-life coach Herb Brooks, a failed puck-slinger looking to live vicariously through a gold medal line-up.

The Last Unicorn (1982) – DVD

April 28, 2004Posted in1980s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, France, Japan, UK, West Germany

*/**** Image D Sound D
screenplay by Peter S. Beagle, based on his novel
directed by Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass

by Walter Chaw Rankin & Bass’ typically sloppy adaptation of Peter S. Beagle’s classic The Last Unicorn (adapted for the screen by Beagle himself) is terribly voiced and animated, even by the ’70s Bakshi/flash-frozen/Saturday-morning conveyor belt standard. The melancholy poetry of Beagle’s novel, rife with dread and the vertiginous feeling of falling into chaos, is notable for its similarity to the big eye, little mouth of traditional anime but falls short of that gold standard in terms of performance and detail. Mouths don’t move, backgrounds are static and recycled, and it doesn’t help that the colours on the print making it to the DVD format look as though they’d been left in the front window for too long.

My Fair Lady (1964) [Two-Disc Special Edition] – DVD

April 5, 2004Posted in1960s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Drama, DVD, Family, Musical, Romance

**/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B
starring Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-White
screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner
directed by George Cukor

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It has always astonished me how high cultural artifacts can be transformed into doltish Broadway musicals–how Cervantes could suffer the bastardization of "Man of La Mancha", how T.S. Eliot could inspire "Cats", or how Shakespeare could invite a cross-pollination with "juvenile delinquency" to become a deadly flower called West Side Story. It's a mystery best left to specialists, I guess, hence I can only look with amazement on Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady, which bears the distinction of sucking every ounce of irony out of George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" to accommodate fabric and masonry in its place. I suppose that George Cukor's film version is some kind of achievement taken on its own terms, but the problem is, those terms are piddling: the issues of class and gender that were contemporary to Shaw are downplayed so relentlessly that what remains is nothing more than a funny story with occasional songs–which, sadly, is exactly what a musical audience is looking for.