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One of the last of the lavish Old Hollywood musicals. The performances are all fine, with Streisand the obvious standout, vocally and otherwise. Michael Crawford is a little goofy but I guess he's supposed to be. He's a little Dick Van Dyke-ish at times. Your mileage may vary on whether that's a good thing or not. I was less interested in his plot than the one involving Streisand and Walter Matthau. Pretty much anytime Babs is on screen things are much more lively. I say this as someone who isn't her biggest fan, but she really does own this film. The direction from legend Gene Kelly is solid and appropriately old-school for its time. It really feels like a throwback to the MGM musicals of the 1940s and 50s, with great sets and costumes and big production numbers. The cinematography is also very beautiful. So it's a great-looking movie with an upbeat tempo throughout and some very nice songs. The length is the biggest negative, and I did find myself checking my watch during a couple of the lengthy Crawford segments. But it's still a good movie with a lot to recommend, especially for fans of older musicals.

Just as if you have a bad Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, the entire play will fall flat, if you have a bad Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly, the musical won't be any good. This Broadway musical is a highly sought after role for middle aged women, a tour-de-force they hope to play, usually to warm up for or coast after playing Mama Rose in Gypsy. Barbra Streisand would have been an excellent choice for the famous matchmaker, except in 1969 she was too young. Dolly Levi is supposed to be a middle-aged widow who sings the show-stopping song "Before the Parade Passes By" because it's a metaphor for her life, not a twenty-seven-year-old woman with impeccable makeup and a hair color that's as flattering as her clothes. Unfortunately, the lack of a gray wig on Babs is not the only flaw in Hello, Dolly! Michael Crawford plays Cornelius, and it takes an enormous amount of suspension of disbelief to buy into the love story between him and Marianne McAndrew. In the original film The Matchmaker, starring Shirley Booth, the young romantic leads were played by Shirley MacLaine and Anthony Perkins. Anthony is handsome and sweet, so it makes sense that Shirley M considers giving up a fortune for true love. Michael Crawford is bumbling, gangly, and almost acts like he's mentally off. Plus-sorry Phantom of the Opera fans-but his voice leaves much to be desired. Ironically, his romantic companion did have her voice dubbed! Walter Matthau plays Babs's love interest, and there's no feasible reason why she would ever want him, let alone when she's so young and still could have any number of men she wanted. He's unattractive, incredibly grumpy, walks through his song like it's the last thing in the world he wants to be doing, and acts like he hates the very sight of his pursuer-which, he actually did. Rumor has it that he hated Barbra Streisand so much he actually refused to kiss her! So, my great question, as it seems to be with everyone in this movie, is why was he cast? Gene Kelly directed this movie, and while he had enormous attention to detail in the costumes, production designs, and choreography, he didn't seem to have a great eye for his cast. Why didn't he pick his old sailor-suit buddy Frank Sinatra for Walter Matthau's part? He would have been the right age, he could sing without making audiences cringe, and Jerry Herman could have written him a couple of extra songs-as he did for Barbra. It would have been totally believable why Babs moves Heaven and Earth to be with him, and when he sings his song "It Takes a Woman" it would have been incredibly cute for the Guys and Dolls star to sing another ode to the fairer sex. I know I've been dissing this movie adaptation quite a bit, but there are some good parts to it. Obviously, if Hello, Dolly! is one of your favorite musicals, you're going to want to rent the movie. Barbra Streisand in her gold dress during the title song is a pretty famous image. And Barbra does have a wonderful voice, so it's fun to watch her take control of the screen, especially in the show-stopping "So Long Dearie". Also, if you're a fashion fanatic, you'll probably want to rent this one just to look at Irene Sharaff's gorgeous dresses. Besides that, this is one of those movies you'll watch once to say you did and then not really want to show your friends.

A lesson in miscasting! Walter Matthau is a wonderful comedic actor, but misfit in a romantic lead and has no vocal talent. Lee Marvin did much better in "Paint Your Wagon" and may have been a better choice for this lead. Barbara Streisand lives up to her "loud" reputation. The only vocal talent in this film is Barbara or silenced. Cameos by Liza and Louis only beg the issue of having a cameo at all. Neither was used to full advantage. Choreography was well done, but this is a Gene Kelly film. We would expect that. The feature song "Hello Dolly" was overdone. The song should have been presented with a much greater part by Louis Armstrong and a much smaller part by Streisand. My rating -2- objectively, a little better that totally awful.

"Hello, Dolly!" is the film version of the Broadway play that won ten Tony awards in 1964, including best musical, and best actress in a musical: Carol Channing. As the original Dolly Levi, Channing starred in the Broadway version for a year and a half in the mid 60's, and then toured with the production nationally, off and on, even into the 90's. Substituting "Lyndon" for "Dolly", she even sang the title song at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, to the delight of LBJ, who adopted the tune as his presidential theme song. Such was the stature of Carol Channing in the 1960's, and the acclaim she brought, both to the character of Dolly, and to the entire "Hello, Dolly!" Broadway production. Through the years many actresses have tried to play Dolly Levi. But none could equal the legendary Carol Channing, in my opinion. I saw her stage performance; she, and she alone, had the ability to make the character of Dolly credible. But, unfortunately, for whatever reason, the powers that be decided not to cast Channing in the film, one of the saddest errors in movie musical history. The film was a box office disappointment. Although Channing's absence is the film's single biggest letdown for me, it is not the only letdown. With a DVD run time of 146 minutes, the film gushes with lengthy and, at times, totally unnecessary scenes. The gaudy parade spectacle alone, with all that pomp and mass of humanity, goes on for six minutes, while doing nothing to further the plot. Similarly, all those scenes in the Harmonia Gardens are over produced, over directed, and just plain overblown. Further, "Hello, Dolly!" is supposed to be a comedy. At least the stage version with Carol Channing was funny. The film does have a few good points. Louis Armstrong makes a welcome, but too brief, appearance toward the end of the film. The late Danny Lockin, with tons of talent, gives a wonderfully animated performance. And Marianne McAndrew, with her perfect posture and stunning overall appearance, is excellent in the role of Irene. These few gold nuggets aside, the film does not live up to what it could have been, had there been some restraint in production, some careful editing, and especially the inclusion of Carol Channing in the title role.

Hello Dolly is really a fun film, it's based on Thorton Wilders "The Matchmaker" And thats just what Dolly is, She interferes with peoples lives for a living. From this ensues a lot of toe tapping music and enthusiastic energy. I really love this film, and I think it's one of the great musicals and people can't help but be swept up by it. It's brassy and loud but a great film to see. Barbra Streisand is not my favorite actress, but she brings vitality and loud mouth approch to the role that is pretty funny. My favorite characters are Cornelius Hackl and Baraby Tucker, they make a good comedy team (one tall, one short). I love the way they get nervous when first entering Miss Malloy's Hat shop. I enjoyed every minute of the movie. If you're in the mood for a good old fashioned musical with great energy, go for Hello Dolly.

BARBRA STREISAND's Dolly Levi seems to borrow heavily from Mae West's way with a spoken line, but when she sings any of the Jerry Herman songs she does them justice. Clearly, she's not the right age for the matchmaker role but this is just one of the film's flaws. The film itself is so over-produced, so decked out with fancy scenery that it looks as though no expense was spared to recreate Little Old New York in the upper Hudson valley and a village of gingerbread houses all gleaming immaculately while the costumed cast strolls along its newly paved streets. And they do stroll and they do sing...in endless musical numbers, some of which are quite dazzling before they become downright tedious from overkill. Somewhere along the line, director Gene Kelly lost his way. He and Stanley Donen collaborated but may have tried sticking too close to the Broadway play to give the movie any sense of cinema magic. And the youngsters played by Danny Lockin and Michael Crawford are too obviously over-the-top in an effort to be cute comics. Crawford's Cornelius is such a far cry from his later Broadway "Phantom" that it's almost incredible to believe it's the same actor. WALTER MATTHAU and Streisand did not get along during the shooting and this is sometimes evident in their byplay. Whatever, he's looked much more comfortable in other roles. Harry Sradling, Jr.'s technicolor cinematography is top-notch. Summing up: Not the worst musical ever made, but hardly among the best.

I had the dubious honor of being a part of my high school's production of HELLO DOLLY a zillion years ago, so there was a time when I was intimately familiar with both the play and the film. It's been a long time and truthfully, I had my reservations about the show even then. Watching the film again this past Saturday on Reel 13, I was reminded how lame the show really is and the film version, as directed by Gene Kelly, is even worse. I suspect the popularity of Jerry Herman's original production during the 60's had more to do with the Carol Channing persona than the story. If that's true, then the film was handicapped before it even began by bypassing Channing in favor of a very young Barbra Streisand, playing a character fifteen or twenty years older than she actually was. This is not to say that Streisand is bad in the role. Her strongest assets – her voice and her comic timing – are on prime display here and she imbues the character with an engaging energy and vitality. She puts forth extraordinary effort, but one has a hard time believing that a) she is a widowed matchmaker and has been out of the public scene for a decade and b) she would be a good match for Walter Matthau's Horace Vandergelder character. This is the primary plot of the film and the film suffers because it never once seems plausible. Gosh – Streisand seems even younger than the ingénue Irene Malloy character (Marianne McAndrew). Unfortunately, the rest of the cast, who were at least age-appropriate, were horribly off-the-mark in their performances. On the whole, I blame Kelly, who seems to have directed all of them (except maybe Streisand and Matthau) to be ridiculously over-the-top. This includes a baby-faced Michael Crawford as Cornelius Hackl and a I-don't-believe-he's-straight-for-a-second Tommy Tune, both of which went on to have wonderful stage careers. On film, they come off as silly and cartoonish. What's interesting to me is that as an actor, Kelly was always so smooth, sincere and understated. I'm bewildered as to why he wasn't able to bring that style to the table when he's behind the camera. It could have done wonders for the plot. It's hard enough to believe that all these people fall in love (there are four couples in the film) within a twenty-four hour period. The wide-eyed, loud and juvenile performance styles make it impossible, but I wonder what it would have been like if the characters had the opportunity to establish real connections with each other – make us care and root for them to get together. It could have made for an entirely different experience. (For more information on this or any other Reel 13 film, check out their website at www.reel13.org)

This gargantuan musical was the last of its kind. It's like a dinosaur ear-marked for extinction and yet it's highly entertaining. Parts of it are terrible, (mostly those scenes in which Babs doesn't appear), and Gene Kelly's direction is never as light on its feet as his dancing used to be but when the aforementioned Miss Striesand is on screen, the movie soars. Critics complained that at 27 she was much too young for the part of Dolly Levi but she's a bona-fide star, so what the heck; her Dolly is ageless and as musical-comedy performances go this is one of the best. The Jerry Herman score is decidedly old-fashioned Broadway. Sondheim may be the greater composer but Herman gave us tunes we could hum and the production numbers here are terrific, in particular the title song which gives us Striesand, high-kicking waiters and Louis Armstrong. Purists will always prefer the Joseph Anthony version of Thornton Wilder's original play "The Matchmaker" but this is no disgrace, so put on your Sunday clothes and let's have a whale of a time.

While some of the cast of "Hello, Dolly! leaves something to be desired, its sets, costumes, general production values, and choreography cannot be beat. Striesand is miscast, but nobody can fault her for that. She gives it her all, and frankly, I prefer her performance in this film, over her inexplicable star-making turn in "Funny Girl". Lots of money was spent on making this film, and every cent of it can be seen in the finished product. The film is leaps and bounds over almost everything made today. Every musical number is first-rate. This film should ONLY be seen in WIDESCREEN. To view a cropped video tape would be silly, since you would be seeing only half the film. "Hello, Dolly! is lots of fun, and a true testimony to the lost art of fine film-making.