I HATE MUSICALS
1: The Sound Of Music
Three and a half hours long! There are pregnant women in labour who don?t suffer for that long. Now I am no fascist but I bet I am not the only person egging on Rolf and his Nazi chums when they hunt down the Austrian version of the Brady Bunch in the final stages of the film. This is after all a film which is about someone not competent enough to be a Nun. Considering the onerous duties nun?s have we have to wonder about her mental state. From what I remember the duties of a nun are
a) Wearing a wimple
b) Being generally quiet, thoughtful and serene
(There is a c) which involves being stern and whipping children but this is predominantly in historic Irish dramas). Anyone who cannot pull off these two jobs not, as the nuns suggest of Maria here, a wilo the wisp, a flibberty-gibbit or even a clown. She is a mentally damaged imbicile and should not be left to look after six children. Especially children who turn twee into an artform. Much like Maria turns curtains into clothes. Do you remember the kid whose mum made him clothes out of curtains at school. No, me neither – I guess I repressed his tragic suicide from my mind.
I have often fantasised about the hill Julie Andrews twirls her way up at the start of the Stinking Sound Of Music. Hoping that this time the hill would suddenly end, leaving a gash in the landscape that she unfortunately tips herself down. Yodelling all the way down so those Men With a Beer With Its Head Afloat could hear*.
If any children of mine, rather than going to bed, took five minutes via a complex, multi-lingual song, I think I would send the right down the workhouse. The Von Trapp children are described as thoroughly naughty, but with all their girlie singing are about as hard as candy floss. The lyrical nonsense thrown up by this film is almost endless. ?Edelwiess – I am happy to meet you? – it?s a plant! ?I am sixteen going on seventeen? -you are sixteen going on six feet under if I had my way. ?La – a note to follow soh? – what?s wrong with ?La – a rubbish scouser band??
As for Captain Von Trapp of the Austrian Navy. Austria is land locked. He just putts a few yacht?s around Lake Geneva. So we have a failed Nun, a pointless captain and a family of halfwitted children (especially the youngest one with a face like a sprout) – versus the Nazi?s. Am I really the only one cheering on the Nazi?s here? Go Rolf, go.
*The Lonely Goatherd also rhymes Table D?H?te heard with the titular LG, forming possibly the worst rhyme in musical history.