Bye Bye Birdie is really just a big piece of fluff, but it made movie stars of Dick Van Dyke and Ann-Margaret (the former had starred in the Broadway show, the latter made an Elvis movie immediately after, which is funny considering the plot). It's fluff, but it's largely fun fluff. Broad comedy in 1960s films is something that often annoys me, and some of the silliness (the stuff with the turtle, for example, and Paul Lynde's over-acting) just isn't funny to me. Van Dyke's mother's histrionics, however, did get me in the end. But you can get away with a lot more in a musical, so something like Janet Leigh's fez dance is a marvel to behold. There are, in fact, a lot of nice numbers in this story of a teen idol's visit to a small town, including Leigh competing with her dancing phantom in "Put on a Happy Face", Conrad Birdie making all the girls faint in "Honestly Sincerely" (and honestly, sincerely, there's a surprising amount of crotch for the era), and the jealousies of "A Lot of Livin' to Do".
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Siskoid
Bye Bye Birdie is really just a big piece of fluff, but it made movie stars of Dick Van Dyke and Ann-Margaret (the former had starred in the Broadway show, the latter made an Elvis movie immediately after, which is funny considering the plot). It's fluff, but it's largely fun fluff. Broad comedy in 1960s films is something that often annoys me, and some of the silliness (the stuff with the turtle, for example, and Paul Lynde's over-acting) just isn't funny to me. Van Dyke's mother's histrionics, however, did get me in the end. But you can get away with a lot more in a musical, so something like Janet Leigh's fez dance is a marvel to behold. There are, in fact, a lot of nice numbers in this story of a teen idol's visit to a small town, including Leigh competing with her dancing phantom in "Put on a Happy Face", Conrad Birdie making all the girls faint in "Honestly Sincerely" (and honestly, sincerely, there's a surprising amount of crotch for the era), and the jealousies of "A Lot of Livin' to Do".CynInFlicks
I watched this today for the first time in many, many years - loved it to bits! Great fun. I would love to see it on a big screen :-)