Victor Victoria

1982 musical

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Down-on-their-luck Parisians team up and scheme up to make one of them, a female cabaret singer, into a male female impersonator. Things get complicated when a mobster falls in love with her. Or him.

"It's a guy," says James Garner's bodyguard, played by Alex Karras. That was his response after Julie Andrews' first big number and a big reveal for her audience. Unfortunately for this movie, it's really hard to believe that anybody can look at Julie Andrews and think she's a man. But I'll tell you one thing--she does some wonderful things with her voice here, slight changes to make her singing seem like a man pretending to be a woman instead of a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman or a woman just being a woman. If I would have closed my eyes and just listened to her musical numbers, I would have bought that she was a he.

Maybe if it was anybody but Julie Andrews, the whole premise would have been more believable. I'm not sure anybody else could have nailed the vocal work like she did though. And I find her stunningly attractive. So I guess I'm happy that Julie Andrews was the titular characters.

I like most of the cast here (Andrews, John Rhys-Davies, Karras, and even Garner), but it's Robert Preston who steals the show. He's great, and his rapport with Andrews really makes this thing sing at the beginning. Their first moments together in a restaurant are filled with Marx-esque rapport, and if you don't believe me, ask their waiter who made a reference to the Marxes. I also thought Lesley Ann Warren was charming as Norma, Garner's original girlfriend. Listening to her say "I'm horny" is one of the highlights.

Of my life.

Other highlights include that aforementioned restaurant scene in which a cockroach makes an appearance. Shots from outside the restaurant are artistically comic. There's also a great scene with characters sneaking in and out of a hotel room which was a great bit of quiet and well-choreographed slapstick. A third highlight has to be a scene where Julie Andrews strips because when Mary Poppins has a stripping scene in a movie, it's got to be a highlight.

Don't get overly excited though, you pervs. This movie's PG. That scene's barely a spoonful of sugar.

As you might expect from a romantic musical, there's a whole lot of artificiality to this. I enjoyed the Paris street and hotel and club sets, but, of course, I'm a big fan of artificial sets anyway. The dialogue (a Frenchman using the term "cotton-picking," for example) and the gangster stuff isn't exactly authentic either. The too-quickly-developing romance plot slides in, unfortunately making Preston's character more of a secondary character than I would have liked, and eventually the tone shifts from playful to something a little different. I was kind of getting sick of the movie after a while, but it never completely wears out its welcome.

This was one of three 1982 movies I can think of that had a prominent male character who was either becoming a woman or pretending to be a woman. I think for an early-80's movie, this handles homosexuality really maturely. The gayness isn't played for laughs, and the movie even toys with stereotypes a little bit. It's not pretending to be anything profound--it's too breezy to be profound--but it's approaching issues that would have made a lot of people uncomfortable in the early parts of that decade--as opposed to now when a guy like Trump is being worshiped like a God by some people--it unexpected ways.

This was another Josh recommendation. He lent me a copy of this while I was making my Best of 1982 list about four months ago. It wouldn't crack the top-ten, but I'm glad I watched it.

This is a poorly-written review, and I'm sorry that Josh had to read it.