Yul Brynner is highly entertaining, the sets and costumes are impressive, and there are a couple of interesting or funny moments, but The King and I is fairly dull and shallow most of the time. Lang's direction crawls along, Lehman's script is surprisingly weak, and the main character - Kerr's Anna - is too priggish and tiresome to be very much fun. (Where's Julie Andrews' Maria when you need her?) Most disappointing of all are the songs by Rodgers and Hammerstein, which are mostly unmemorable. Only "Getting to Know You" and "Shall We Dance" standout much. The subplot romance between the two Latinos (Rita Moreno and Carlos Rivas) playing Asian lovers is achingly unoriginal and uninteresting. The film is also condescending in its view of the "little Asian people." And what are we to make of Anna's son? He appears at the beginning, then disappears throughout most of the film - which isn't a bad thing - only to reappear at the very end. Finally, the tear-jerk ending seems rushed, unclear and disappointing. One wants to be moved by the King's unexpected death, because Brynner makes us like him so much during the film, but it all goes by so quickly that we just don't care.
The film does contain one of the most surreal Hollywood sequences of all-time, up there with Marlene Dietrich singing in an ape costume in Blonde Venus: The Jerome Robbins choreographed dance of "The Small House of Uncle Tom." Here we have a latina actress playing a Burmese girl, narrating a play based on a novel about blacks in the southern U.S. written by a white woman from Connecticut, and the "Thai" dancers strut their stuff to Western music that sounds vaguely Asian, and there's some blackface and a statue of Buddha and amazingly cool costumes and the whole thing takes place at a lavish dinner given by the Siamese king trying to act civilized in front of the wealthy Europeans living in Bangkok, and it's all quite bizarre and post-modern in its own way... but Jerome Robbins wins out, giving us the most interesting part of the film.
All in all, if you want a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, stick with the Sound of Music.
I do want one of those cool jackets Yul Brynner wears, though.
The film does contain one of the most surreal Hollywood sequences of all-time, up there with Marlene Dietrich singing in an ape costume in Blonde Venus: The Jerome Robbins choreographed dance of "The Small House of Uncle Tom." Here we have a latina actress playing a Burmese girl, narrating a play based on a novel about blacks in the southern U.S. written by a white woman from Connecticut, and the "Thai" dancers strut their stuff to Western music that sounds vaguely Asian, and there's some blackface and a statue of Buddha and amazingly cool costumes and the whole thing takes place at a lavish dinner given by the Siamese king trying to act civilized in front of the wealthy Europeans living in Bangkok, and it's all quite bizarre and post-modern in its own way... but Jerome Robbins wins out, giving us the most interesting part of the film.
All in all, if you want a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, stick with the Sound of Music.
I do want one of those cool jackets Yul Brynner wears, though.