Hello Dolly (part 1)

Okay, so, I know Hello Dolly from two places:

1. For its reputation as a film that nearly bankrupted Fox and heralded the end of the big roadshow musical as a profitable endeavor.

and

1. (and much more prominently) Wall-E

Wall-E's director, Howard Stanton, explained that he chose Hello Dolly because he was looking for interesting, antiquated human cultural detritus that Wall-E might find in the garbage, and because he had played Barnaby in a high-school production of Hello Dolly.

"I turned to my wife and I said, 'I think I have the strangest idea I've ever had.' Once I had it in my head, I couldn't drop it. I had to try it. I just kept waiting for it to fall apart. There were so many reasons why it wouldn't hold. It was so incongruous that it was attractive, and so we worked it into the story."

So, Hello Dolly.

Review: faintly negative. Gosh this is a slow, plodding musical.

The first musical number, Call on Dolly/Just Leave Everything to Me, is good: it's a high-energy dynamic musical number introducing Dolly, this domineering, dishonest, fixer of a woman with a business card advertising her services for any possible situation you might encounter. Also: not super familiar with Barbra Streisand's ouvre, I think the most I've actually seen her in one place at one time is in the music video Barbra Streisand.

if you want a law abolished, jury swayed or toenails polished, just leave everything to me

if you want your liver tested, glasses made, cash invested, just leave everything to me

Okay! Interesting dynamic character with a lot of possibility! I'm excited! Maybe this will be good!

Also, Dolly having a business card for everything is a running joke that's called back to at least two more times in the show, which is excellent.

Then a ... fully four minute long credit sequence. It's like they want us to experience Dolly's journey from New York to Yonkers in real time.

I don't actually mind these sluggish montage scenes because when I'm watching musicals I'm usually also coding and they're nice enough as background content, but if I had made the mistake of devoting my full attention to the movie I'd have died. (this goes for The Sound of Music, too, great "coding" movie, but if I tried to watch it on its own I would be the one coding)

In our next scene we introduce Walter Matthau, half-a-millionaire¹, being a hot dick to literally everyone in his life.

Starting by insisting that his daughter, Ermahgerd, is not to marry this artist boy.

... Did... did I get her name wrong?

Nope, there it is.

Then he denies a raise or any time off to his two clerks, Cornelius and Barnaby, while also insisting that "28" is a stupid age to be, and that "40" would be a much more respectable age.

Horace sucks. I get it, he's supposed to be an old crank, but oh boy is a lot of this musical going to revolve around Walter Matthau being a grump. The framing of the whole show is, I think, trying to make him out to be a "lovable grump" - it's okay that he's a miserable old crank because that crankiness is a funny schtick.

pictured: a lovable grump done well

Folks in the 60s were, I think, a lot more on board with watching Walter Matthau try to extract comedy out of being sour and cranky.

Then he gets the worst song in the entire movie, It Takes a Woman.

This doesn't even have the common decency to be a villain song. Misogyny: The Song is intended to be a comedy song: Horace wants to marry a woman because he wants free labor for chores, and so the song emphasises the softness of the woman he intends to work like a horse.

And so she'll work until infinity

Three cheers for femininity

Charming. 🙄

I get that this is intended in a tongue-and-cheek "well, obviously, we're less shitty to women in nineteen-sixty-something than they were in eighteen-ninety-something" but ho boy. This joke drags and it's carried on the back of Walter Matthau's singing voice.

Anyhow, Dolly (who wants to marry Horace, because he's rich) shows up just in time to intercept Horace on his way back to New York where he intends to propose to a milliner named Irene.

Dolly begins a series of devious plot machinations to sabotage things: she convinces the stockboys, Cornelius and Barnaby, that they should seek adventure in New York and that they should seek it at Irene's hat shop, at exactly the same time that Horace plans to stop by. She also convinces Ermagerd and her Boy to meet her in New York later for dinner where she'll fix everything for them, too.

Christ I hate Cornelius and Barnaby, their whole "pie-eyed naif" schtick is just agonizing. Holy cabooses!

However, that does take us to Put on Your Sunday Clothes, the third musical number and the one most prominently featured in Wall-E, because it is the best song in the entire movie, and also the sort of thing that's absolutely chilling when played over a slow pan across a post-apocalyptic wasteland:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLx_7wEmwms

Uncontroversial opinion: Wall-E is a much better movie than Hello Dolly.

I'd thought that this was mostly just a Cornelius and Barnaby song, but no, everyone is going to New York - Dolly, Ermagerd, Horace, Cornelius, Barnaby, and the entire town of Yonkers all join in, both in the song and the trip.

this is one of those "non-diegetic movie moments": the entire town of Yonkers isn't actually going to New York probably, but it's a funny way to end the scene.

Okay, enter Irene, a young milliner who, paralleling Cornelius, tries to convince her young friend to have an adventure with her. Flirt with some stupid boys. Do something that's more fun than making hats endlessly.

If there's one thing I've learned about eighteen-ninety-something its that apparently making fancy hats is a total bummer.

man, this fuckin' sucks

Irene gets a song, "Ribbons Down My Back" which I forgot immediately. All it does is re-establish the themes she's literally just established: Irene is bored and horny (but in a classy, romantic eighteen-ninety-something way).

And then some boys show up. They're terrified, and Irene does her best not to scare them off.

Dolly shows up with Horace. Oh no! It's eighteen-ninety-something! If Irene seems the kind of woman who's just hanging around unaccompanied men she'll be totally unmarriagable!

god, these two are exhausting

Dolly engineers to reveal to Horace that there have in fact been two men here just recently: gasp! The impropriety!

Horace is so disgusted by the idea that Irene might have had men in her shop that he storms off in a huff.

Dolly does more dark pattern social engineering, pretending that Cornelius is rich and influential and setting him up with Irene, setting up Barnaby with that girl who was hanging around behind Irene, and arranging for them all to meet up at the same restaurant that she invited Ermagerd and Her Boy to. Later, she'll invite Horace to the same restaurant along with a mock heiress as part of a scheme. Wow, that restaurant scene sounds like it's going to be a real doozy!

... okay, I'm going to level with you: that restaurant scene is fully 45 minutes away, and nothing of interest happens between now and then.

I'm sure someone at some point has pointed out that the entire middle hour of this two-and-a-half-hour film is almost entirely unnecessary, but I'm discovering it now, for myself.

Yes, the story has been moving along at far too much of a clip, so it's time to waste some time.

Cornelius and Barnaby can't dance, so Dolly has to show them how, in Dancing.

This gives us a lot more of their squeaky, high-pitched, nervous teenager energy, which is just awful.

Have you ever thought "I wish the pimple-faced teen from the Simpsons could do a bunch of musical numbers"?

"Look! He's dancing!"

The large musical interlude cannot be contained, and they take it to the streets, getting half of New York involved in these dance lessons.

Huge dance number.

jesus, guys, take it down a notch

Don't worry, though, now we get Before the Parade Passes By, an extended song where Dolly cops to being lonely, too.

I think this is intended to establish some humanity for this woman who has hitherto come off as something of a bugs-bunny-esque trickster demon, with the problems that:

• God, it's long, that could be established with a sad look here or there much more quickly.

• She's angling for Horace, who, as we've established, is an absolute trash-tier beau (aside from his money).

• She absolutely fog-horns her way through this song and establishing emotional vulnerability through MAXIMUM BELTING is not always so effective.

📯📯📯

Then there's an actual parade.

It takes for-fucking-ever.

the movie takes a beat to make the joke that suffragettes were grim and stern and horse-faced, which, uh, great.

I little bit of plot happens: she knows that Horace is going to be at the parade and uses this opportunity to both invite him to a dinner with a mysterious heiress and meet up with a friend who she plans to use as her mock heiress.

Exhausted? I am too, but we're only at the...

Five minutes to get popcorn and stretch your legs.

Continued in part 2