Reviews Worth Reading
Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much was Day’s proof of concept, which based on her further career everyone seemed to ignore. That Touch of Mink, a film that makes Cary Grant look like he’s not an actor, is just the kind of spineless jaunt that I hate to associate her with.
The result is a fantasy of movie logic that contains within it some special mystery, some lavish neo-chanbara (“sword-fighting”) crossed with that appearance of frontier Americans that young boys saw within the Wayne construct (but which, I’d venture a guess, it would not have been American for him to acknowledge).
Hello, Dolly! can’t get passed Streisand. It’s a solo concert trying to be a movie. Character is more a windfall than a result of the plot, which concerns Dolly pulling so many strings to get what she wants that it’s not even clever – it’s so decadently convenient that she seems to have the writers on her side.
This moral naysaying is shockingly against type for a film bursting with Copacabana headliners. Remember that these are the guys hired explicitly to hold a mic in one hand, a drink in the other, and to generate a fantasy of wealth and well-meaningness that makes thousands of less charming people mistake clubbing for having fun. Robin and the 7 Hoods is drastically less endearing than any of its hoods.