A friend recommended “Thoroughly Modern Millie” to me, saying that it is her favorite play. When I saw it listed on Blockbuster.com, I added it to my queue, excited to see it. I don’t know if it wasn’t staged quite right, or what, but I just wasn’t impressed. (Wow, this is starting to sound a lot like my review of “HMS Pinafore.”)
Unlike “Pinafore,” though, “Millie” was filmed as a movie, with Julie Andrews in the starring role and Mary Tyler Moore and Carol Channing as supporting actors. Perhaps that should have been my clue right there – I don’t care for Carol Channing. But before I get diverted off on that tangent, I shall continue.
Millie (Julie Andrews) is a young woman living on her own in a boarding house, looking for work and determined to find herself a rich, unattached boss. Her plan is to make herself indispensable, then irresistible, then finally the boss’s wife. She’s a “modern,” as she calls herself, a woman who is capable of forging her own future. And in this year of 1922, it’s high time for women to get the respect they deserve!
She gets a job in the offices of Mr. Trevor Graydon (John Gavin) a very handsome single man, and she decides that he will be the object of her choosing. It’s not long, however, before he has set his own sights on Millie’s neighbor, Miss Dorothy (Mary Tyler Moore.) Millie, meanwhile, is being courted by a happy-go-lucky young man named Jimmy (James Fox) who would rather gallivant in his employer’s sports car than to actually work. As much as Millie hates to admit it, she’s falling for Jimmy, and that goes completely against her plans to marry a rich man.
Meanwhile, the police are combing the city, trying to ferret out the criminals of a white slavery ring, and girls are disappearing from Millie’s boarding house. By the end of the movie, that mystery has been solved, Millie and Miss Dorothy both have the men they want, and all’s well that ends well.
However, there were a lot of sequences in the film that didn’t make sense to the overall plot and were just unnecessary. Jimmy climbed up Millie’s building to see her, spending probably eight minutes of screen time accomplishing that feat, and then she joins him outside, for another four minutes or so, forwarding the plot in no way whatsoever. We spent quite a bit of time listening to Carol Channing sing (if that’s what it can be called) and watching her dance (if that’s what that can be called.) And the ending was nonsensical and ludicrous.
The movie is rated G, and shouldn’t be offensive to the watcher, although there were a few comments about the ways that beads should hang down the front of a dress and how to stuff a camisole — it’s certainly not anything more blatant than you would see on TV on any given day and that’s for sure.
My overall feeling: There were some fun moments in the movie, but I was disappointed. It felt like a whole lot of hooplah leading up to a “blah” ending. If you’re looking for something to really knock your socks off, this one won’t be it.
However, it won scads of Golden Globes and Academy Awards, so what do I know?
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Mary Tyler Moore: Star Still Shining Bright