A pilot, stranded in the desert, meets a little boy who is a prince on a planet.
Director: Stanley Donen
Stars: Richard Kiley, Steven Warner, Donna McKechnie, Bob Fosse, Gene Wilder.
Ronn Forella ... choreographer
Bob Fosse ... choreographer
10 songs in the Soundtracks, all Music by Frederick Loewe, Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner. Per IMDB trivia, the last musical written by the pair. I don't find it in IBDb.
Rated 7 on 2006-01-02, I cannot concur today.
For me, the only segment worth watching is Fosse as the Snake. He combines all his usual tricks (although he doesn't propel himself vertically as much as he did 20 years prior), and creates a very snakelike performance without literally slithering down a tree (as did Van Johnson's double at the beginning of The Pied Piper of Hamelin ('57) or other snake choreographies I couldn't pinpoint right now... perhaps Juliet Prowse in the Garden of Eden ballet in Can-Can ('60).) I actually laughed a bit when he ... oh, I won't spoil the surprise in case I'm lucky enough to forget before a subsequent viewing. As noted in an IMDb trivia item, this dance is visually very similar to some moves Michael Jackson performed, but not the moonwalk (as I had falsely remembered.) Donen did a tremendous amount of jump cuts to create more "movement", but I still liked this.
I might need to watch the Fox segment again, but I didn't love it today. GW should be an excellent nervous fox, but he wasn't quite manic enough. And he's not dancerly enough. You need someone small who can bound about. And I would have liked another woman in the cast; DM was the only one (as the rose). I can't say I know who should have been cast, and GW would probably have been a name draw in the US after Willy Wonka ('71).
Of the other 4 characters, I recognize only 1 name (Clive Revill), and not sure if I recognized other faces because of the distortion lens used. This was filmed in England and Tunisia; they might all be Brits.
Maybe I'll like it better in future, but today I'm doing a downgrade.
BTW, this is the only music/al I own from '74 (I think there were 15 in my master list). Either I couldn't find many online, or some that I found turned me off early so I turned them off. This is the 3rd and last I've completed. It was a very bad year for musicals.
BTW, this is the only music/al I own from '74 (I think there were 15 in my master list). Either I couldn't find many online, or some that I found turned me off early so I turned them off. This is the 3rd and last I've completed. It was a very bad year for musicals.
Paramount, dir. Donen; 6
