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Gypsy (1962)


Rose (Rosalind Russell) is a vaudeville mom. Her goal in life is to make her kids stars. Actually, she wanted to be the star. She wanted to fulfill her dream through her kids.

Louise (Natalie Wood) eventually gets her mom to admit it, but that's way late in the film, after Louise has basically said, "I'm not you. I'm going to do burlesque, because that's what pays the bills."

The movie is an odd musical. I didn't count the number of times characters broke out into songs, but it felt like just a few times, with it mainly being Rose doing the singing. I could 100% be off on this, because Russell didn't keep my interest as an actor, but I'm not sure even Marilyn Monroe in her part would have kept my interest in this film.

I get the plot, but the movie felt overly long. It goes for almost 2 1/2 hours, and I'm thinking it deserved about 90 minutes. The musical numbers were not memorable at all, and they felt somewhat off the cuff -- no rhythm, no rhyme.

This is a part of a DVD collection, and I'm watching the film mainly for Natalie Wood, but her part isn't the focus of the film. She does take on a bigger role at the end, but what she does for the most part is a few very tame burlesque scenes. To be honest, I'm not expecting her to go topless or anything too racy, but the burlesque in this film could have been performed by nuns, it's that tame.

Other viewers appreciate parts of the movie that I didn't think saved it -- the cinematography, for example. I just felt that the movie was overly long, somewhat miscast, and didn't deliver as a musical.

Rating: 2/5 stars
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