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.