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Our Top Reviews
Reviewer: Skyhawk
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Unlike streaming, the DVD is razor sharp with an excellent picture and sound.
Review: Unlike streaming, the DVD is razor sharp with excellent picture and sound.I’m happy to report the movie is on a pressed disc, not a short life purple DVD-R.Don’t take a chance on this movie being banned or censored in the future, get a DVD copy on disc that you can keep.The city of Detroit is featured in this movie. This movie was made, and the movie features a time. When Detroit was a wonderful place to live. In fact, in 1955 Detroit was the wealthiest city on planet earth. That’s right, if you added up the value of the factories, businesses and homes you got a higher number than you would find for New York City, or anywhere else.Lesley Anne Warren as the daughter of the family steals the show (like she does in most films). Also Tommy Steele as the butler gives the movie some Disney charm. I love the father in this movie. He cares about his family. He cares about religion. He cares about the safety of his nation. Is there anything that he doesn’t care about? As with most people who care deeply about things, he has a passionate personality and makes mistakes along the way. But you can tell that the mistakes he makes is not because he loves too little, but too much.The Happiest Millionaire was made at a time when Disney was 100% pro American. This is the last live-action film that Walt Disney worked on personally, it has a stellar cast (Greer Garson, Gladys Cooper, Lesley Ann Warren, Geraldine Page), a score by the Shermans.The Happiest Millionaire is not Mary Poppins, but it’s still contains the magic of the Magic Kingdom.
Reviewer: Nicole W.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Be happy, watch this movie!
Review: Listen if you don’t watch musicals where the characters dance and sing around alligators in the solarium, you just aren’t living! Enjoy this with your family!
Reviewer: Sandi
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A funny little charmer
Review: Based loosely on the book, “My Philadelphia Father,” this Disney musical entertains in a flick full of charming characters. Fred McMurray is cast as the multi-millionaire Biddle heir (the Biddles arrived in America not long after the Mayflower). The Drexel-Biddles are old-stock Philadelphia, Biddle is an uncommon man in an era of conventionality, especially among the aristocracy. He loves boxing and built his own ring in the old stables, and started the Biddle Bible Clubs; he also captured 20+ alligators in Florida and keeps them in pools in the conservatory of his house (all of this is documented). His aunt Mary Drexel, a role captured beautifully by Gladys Cooper lives “just around the corner” from the Biddles, and she attempts to bring some order to the chaotic household. When daughter, (Leslie Ann Warren) is sent away to school, she falls in love with the heir to the Duke fortune, Algier Buchanan Duke (John Davidson). The differences between the wealthy Dukes (new money) and the Biddles (old money) is charmingly captured in song. Geraldine Page (Mrs.Sarah Duke) and Cooper (Aunt Mary Drexel) duel ever so cleverly over the differences in social mores between NYC and Philadelphia, the talky-singy duet, “There Are Those” points out these social more differences. It is a movie the whole family will probably enjoy. Following on the heels of Mary Poppins, the movie didn’t do as well at the box office, probably because the music isn’t as singable as the music from the prior Disney hit, but the movie seems to be making a well-deserved come-back now that it is on DVD. Greer Garson is lovely as Biddle’s wife; low-key and elegant, she is the perfect foil for his mad-cap parenting style. The Duke University, of course, is named for the Duke family, and Sarah Duke is memorialized in the Duke gardens on the university grounds. The story is embellished truth told humorously.
Reviewer: Nicholas G Kent
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Greatest movie I know
Review: This is one of my favorite movies having the Amazon XRay is even better I can learn so much more about my favorite movie great stores funny quips and still such a great movie!
Reviewer: vickie L. richardson
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Excellent movie
Review: Very entertaining
Reviewer: Einsatz
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: “I could be dying!”
Review: Nobody sets out to make a dud, but somehow these things just happen anyway. Watching this film for the first time in decades (having forgotten it even existed), I was struck by the fact that everyone involved was working as hard as they could but the results just weren’t growing roses. Having competent singers might have helped. Having songs worth singing would have also helped immensely. Tightening the story to keep it from straying from the point would have also helped matters greatly. This was, after all, supposedly a biography of a real person (Biddle, played by Fred MacMurray) yet more time was lavished on the budding romance of his daughter (Lesley Ann Warren) and her newly acquired boyfriend (John Davidson). It might have helped promote their careers but it did nothing to keep the story in check. When the focus is kept on MacMurray and Greer Garson, the film is packed with fun (and gators). When it veers off into the more mundane matters of other characters, it falls flat. They managed to give his two sons (Paul Petersen and Eddie Hodges) a single song before shipping them off to boarding school, never to be seen again. Why couldn’t they have done the same thing with their dreary daughter?Other than that, Greer Garson was elegant, Gladys Cooper was all nasty in the best way possible, so too a much underused Geraldine Page. Hermione Baddeley was amusing. Tommy Steele was all teeth and a wink. His song (Fortuosity) was the only one I could remember afterwards and not in a good way.I wouldn’t label it the worst musical ever set to film. I did enjoy most of it. I’m definitely keeping it in my collection and wouldn’t hesitate to watch it again. But. If it was ever rereleased, I’d never buy the original soundtrack. The music was the least successful feature of this film.
Reviewer: マコ
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: 二度と見られないと思っていたので４５年ぶりに見ることが出来て感動でした。字幕スーパーがあればもっとよかったです。
Reviewer: Pierre Mullanu
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Version longue du film avec l ouverture et l entracte.Pour nous,les français, c est la version avec sous titres français. Très bonne comédie musicale, avec des chansons agréables des frères Sherman(Mary Poppins).Le son Dolby Stéréo est magnifique.L image est au top également. Malgré quelques longueurs, un film attachant,avec un peu d humour,la bonne humeur de Tommy Steele et la fantaisie de Fred Mac Murray.Un film mal connu des productions Disney,distribué en France avec une durée de 115mns,au lieu des 172 msn de cette version.à découvrir!nce.P nous les français
Reviewer: Charlie-CJ
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: It’s ironic that some of the best protagonists of the film musical (e.g. Julie Andrews, Liza Minneli and Dick van Dyke) were at their peak in the 1960/70s when the musical had gone out of fashion. So sadly this debut showcase for sparky Brit songster Tommy Steele was pretty much his only major outing in films, other than the slightly disappointing ‘Half a Sixpence’ (bit too sad & not really for kids) and the far more jolly ‘Finnian’s Rainbow’ (where he played Og the Leprechaun). His is the stand-out performance of Happiest Millionaire, and his first song [and dance] number ‘Fortuosity’ is one of the film’s highlights – although rather like Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins, cockney Tommy is stuck with an Irish accent in the movie, as he is cast as Irish immigrant John Lawless. Critics didn’t take to Steele’s ‘in your face’ acting style, but this is largely due to the directors frequent camera close-ups and Steele’s key role as narrator.Screen legend Fred MacMurray (a close friend of Walt’s) plays eccentric Philadelphia millionaire Anthony Biddle, who takes a shine to John Lawless and hires him as the butler. It’s 1916, and Mr. Biddle busies himself with his Biddle Boxing and Bible School (located in his stable) and his alligators in the conservatory. In fact the Mr. Biddle character is based on a real person: Colonel Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle, a muscular Christian who founded the Drexel Biddle Bible Classes in 1907 and their curriculum of fighting-&-praying ultimately attracted 300,000 members. He taught jujitsu and dirty fighting to US Marines in both World Wars and died in 1948 aged 73. The movie follows the antics of his teenage daughter Cordy who meets the handsome young man, Angier Duke, at a social dance. Naturally his equally rich parent’s don’t take to the Biddle household mayhem. The films screenplay by AJ Carothers is based on a play that was based on the 1955 book ‘My Philadelphia Father’ by Cordelia Drexel Biddle (and her dad did keep alligators as pets in one of their staterooms).This movie was panned by the critics and flopped at the cinema, although I really enjoyed seeing it there as an 11 year old way back in 1967. The light-hearted capitalist millionaire storyline probably just seemed too out of touch and dated compared to the mood of youth at the time, who were dealing with social upheaval, student riots, anti-Vietnam demonstrations, and the release of The Beatles ‘Sgt. Peppers’ album. The movie was Oscar nominated for costume though. It was Walt Disney’s last movie, he died during production. He hand-picked a cast of brilliant actors though, that included Tommy Steele, Fred MacMurray, Greer Garson [in her final film], Geraldine Page, Lesley Ann Warren and Gladys Cooper, and they all labour away under Walt’s personal supervision. A master of unconventional casting, Disney personally selected 8-time Oscar nominated Geraldine Page [hot from Chekhov’s The Three Sisters] for the mother-in-law role after rejecting fifty other actresses. Perhaps the film is overly long at nearly three hours and the storyline is fairly modest, but it’s difficult not to be drawn along by the sheer enthusiasm of the cast, and there are many charming moments.The Happiest Millionaire is undeniably a children’s film, and it should suite any child or young teenager that likes the musical genre (e.g. Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang). My daughter (age 14) loves musicals such as 7 brides for 7 brothers, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and The Sound of music, so I tried her with this NTSC Region 1 locked DVD (you need a region-free DVD player to play it) – the movies not available on a PAL region 2 DVD at the moment. It took her two nights to get through, but she thoroughly enjoyed the film and has now watched it countless times. In fact she rates ‘The Happiest Millionaire’ as high as her all time fave Calamity Jane, hence our 5* rating. This is the `road-show’ version of the movie and has all the cut scenes restored (these were cut at first release in an attempt to boost audience figures) – hence the film’s length of 172 minutes on this DVD. Usefully the movie has an intermission halfway. Movie format is widescreen 1.66:1, and the picture and sound quality is OK on the small screen. The only special DVD features are subtitles in French & Spanish and Dolby surround sound, plus there’s a single page insert of ‘scene selections’. The `Mary Poppins’ Shermans’ team was bought in for the songs, although many are fairly forgettable if divorced from the screen choreography – but the films no-where near as bad as many critics suggested, and I would say it has a similar entertainment value to ‘Bedknobs and Broomsticks’, although aimed at a slightly older audience. As a child my fave musical numbers from the film were ‘Fortuosity’, ‘I’ll Always Be Irish’ and ‘Bye-um-pum-pum’, e.g. John Lawless singing `Fortuosity’: “Well now, ain’t this an elegant neighbourhood, all the residents dressed so fine! One day off the boat am I, with a job that’s near, an’ mine! ‘Tis a job with an elegant millionaire, and his elegant family! Today I move from immigrant – to high society!”.
Reviewer: Heather
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: One of the best Disney movies ever! And it’s based on a true story!
Reviewer: Barb
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This is a great movie, with really fabulous music and songs. We had lots of fun and laughed out loud at situations caused by alligators living in the house. The dancing and music are tops. This is funny, entertaining and pleasing to the eyes and the ears.
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