Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.5

The Fantasticks Blu-ray Movie Review

Well at least the Fair to Middlings.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 20, 2015

The theatrical songwriting team of Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones (not that one) may not have entered the public lexicon in the same way that, say, Rodgers and Hammerstein or Lerner and Loewe have, but for me personally, they are one of my earliest and frankly fondest listening memories. One of the sweeter family traditions my parents fostered was springing for a deluxe trip to the Big Apple to stay with my father’s brothers and live the high life as a celebration for having graduated high school. My eldest sister returned from her trip eastward with the Original Cast Recording of a musical entitled 110 in the Shade, which she had gotten to see on the Great White Way, preferring it to a somewhat better known show that was running at the same time, a little thing called Funny Girl. 110 in the Shade was a musicalization of The Rainmaker, and it featured the first big Broadway score by the team of Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones, a pair who had become New York legends due to the Energizer Bunny like success of their off-Broadway outing The Fantasticks. That cast recording my sister brought back from Manhattan was my personal introduction to Schmidt and Jones' extremely appealing songcraft, and it provided hours of rapt listening pleasure to me when I was a very young boy. If 110 in the Shade saw Schmidt and Jones indulging in a bit of Rodgers and Hammerstein-esque Americana in fairly traditional if undeniably lush and beautiful form, The Fantasticks was a somewhat more intimate, and maybe even revolutionary, approach to crafting a musical. The original off-Broadway show ran for a stupendous 42 years and an astounding 17,162 performances, despite being deliberately small scaled and at times decidedly on the twee side. Ostensibly based on French dramatist Edmond Rostand’s Les Romanesques, The Fantasticks from a plot perspective exploits fairly hoary tropes of a girl and boy from squabbling families (or so it would seem—more about that in a moment) who find true love with each other (think Romeo and Juliet set to music, though a bit more sentimentally and less astringently than in West Side Story). From a presentation perspective, though, the stage version of The Fantasticks is a different beast altogether, one that employs techniques like a pseudo-narrator and a patently artificial ambience that indulges in the very theatricality that its small scale demeanor would seem to argue against. These elements perhaps spelled doom for a film version of the venerable property from the get go, though curmudgeons may lay the blame for The Fantasticks’ supposed “failure” more directly at questionable decisions like deciding not to start the film with the musical’s defining song “Try to Remember,” an anthem which has entered the Great American Songbook as one of the most enduring paeans to nostalgia ever written.

The transformation of any stage musical to the medium of film can often be a pretty tricky enterprise, and if the Golden Age of film tuners often took a more or less literal approach toward any stage progenitors, by the 1990s, there was a different artistic ethos at play, one not especially favorable to song and dance in general, let alone something as blatantly and overtly theatrical as The Fantasticks. That said, it’s at least a little ironic that some of those who decry the changes made in this somewhat redacted and revised version of the original are the same folks who applaud the whole scale changes that were made when (to cite just one example) Cabaret matriculated to the screen. Again, my hunch is it’s the very intimacy and peculiar sweetness of the stage version of The Fantasticks that perhaps couldn’t be translated to the medium of film, at least not in its original form, and therefore it’s perhaps a fool’s errand to complain about changes that were made. Those changes are admittedly apart from the probably not helpful editing done at the behest of Francis Ford Coppola after the film screened to a not especially receptive audience back in the day.

If some of the particulars have been rearranged, at least the general outlines of the original plot are more or less intact. Matt Hucklebee (Joey McIntyre) and Luisa Bellamy (Jean Louisa Kelly) are neighbors and deeply in love, despite the fact that their fathers Ben Hucklebee (Brad Sullivan) and Amos Bellamy (Joel Grey, speaking of Cabaret) are avowed enemies. Except—they’re not (enemies, that is). The two fathers, experts at divining the roiling psychologies of their progeny, have created a fake feud in order to spark a romance between their children. It’s worked, perhaps unexpectedly so, but now the fathers are on the hunt for a convenient (and convincing) way to bring the whole charade to a close, so that everyone can sing and dance their way to a happily ever after. A traveling carnival offers that chance in the person of El Gallo (Jonathon Morris), a magician of sorts who crafts an arcane scenario that will hopefully attain closure for the dads and their offspring.

That’s really the nuts and bolts of the “plot,” but part of The Fantasticks’ charm, at least in its original presentation, was its deliberately unpretentious take on pretending. El Gallo is a master of illusion, and part of that mastery is seducing Luisa as part of the big plan to consummate the relationship between Luisa and Matt as well as to end the supposed feud between Amos and Ben. The stage musical is intentionally ironic in offering minimalist stagecraft while exploiting a concept that explores “reality” versus “illusion.” On a widescreen canvas set against the sort of iconic American landscape that Fred Zinnemann utilized for Oklahoma!, some of the play’s patent artificiality grinds rather unnaturally against the (magical?) realist environment.

The Fantasticks still manages to explore some salient issues of romantic “rose colored glasses” syndrome bumping up against the exigencies of “real life.” Director Michael Ritchie offers a really sumptuous visual experience in the film, with wide open expanses providing a beautifully evocative background to the intimate love story at the core of the tale. There’s some raucous support given courtesy of the carnival setting, with Barnard Hughes and Teller (of Penn and Teller) providing fun character turns. The original Fantasticks offered a deliberately small scale “orchestra” of two pianos (the Sullivan Street Theater, where The Fantasticks played for decades, was a very small house), something that has been expanded for film for probably unavoidable reasons, albeit with shimmering orchestrations by Stephen Sondheim’s preferred orchestrator Jonathan Tunick. One of Ritchie’s innovations with this film was having the actors sing “live” during takes, rather than lip synching to playback, and it gives the film a somewhat more visceral feeling in its sung moments than many film musicals are able to conjure up.

Those who love the original stage version of The Fantasticks would probably be best advised to shove memories of the original to the back burner in order to be able to fully appreciate the sweetness of the film iteration. Those who have never seen the stage version may find themselves unexpectedly won over by the film’s heart, something that no amount of tweaking could seriously undermine.

Schmidt and Jones have remained favorites of mine since my early childhood, and for those interested, I highly recommend checking out their other fascinating theatrical endeavors. Aside from The Fantasticks and 110 in the Shade, the two wrote the wonderful two person musical I Do! I Do! (based on The Fourposter) and the superb if sadly underappreciated (at the time, anyway) 1969 musical Celebration. Real musical theater geeks may want to check out the equally fascinating Philemon, a musical which plays somewhat like a companion piece to Celebration in some of its quasi-ritual aspects.

The Fantasticks Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Fantasticks is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.44:1. Whatever one may think of the changes wrought for the film version, there's no denying what a sumptuously beautiful visual experience this is, courtesy of Ritchie's widescreen framings and the luscious cinematography of Fred Murphy. The unbelievably picturesque countryside where the two families live pops magnificently in this high definition presentation, with a gorgeously suffused palette and oftentimes exceptional fine detail that offers precise views of everything from waving wheat to Joel Grey's crow's feet. Detail and shadow detail are both excellent as well, even in scenes like the sweet interaction between Matt and Luisa in a darkened "movie theater" where a silent film version of Romeo and Juliet plays. The elements are in generally superior shape, though there are some very occasional and minor instances of dirt. This has a beautifully filmic appearance which shows no signs of artificial digital intrusion.

The Fantasticks Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Fantasticks features both a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix as well as a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track. Both of these tracks support the film's dialogue and singing exceptionally well, though the 5.1 track really opens up Jonathan Tunick's expressive and well wrought orchestrations. Prioritization is fine even in some of the more manic moments once El Gallo's "plan" starts coming to fruition. Fidelity is top notch and there are no problems of any kind to warrant concern.

The Fantasticks Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

While the "Additional Footage" from the Special Edition DVD is missing on this Blu-ray, this release offers Michael Ritchie's original version (albeit in standard definition).

• Isolated Score Track is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1.


• Original Theatrical Cut (480p; 1:49:46) is Ritchie's preferred cut and restores "Try to Remember" to its "rightful" place at the top of the show, among other differences from the "official" version.


• Theatrical Trailer (480p; 2:11)


• MGM 90th Anniversary Trailer (1080p; 2:06)


• Audio Commentaries:

  Michael Ritchie offers his thoughts on adapting this iconic property.

  Jean Louisa Kelly is hosted by Bruce Kimmel, who himself has a long history with Schmidt and Jones.

  Chris Willman, a journalist who has written extensively about The Fantasticks, is hosted by Twilight Time's Nick Redman.

The Fantasticks Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I recently music directed a cabaret where the singers performed one of my all time favorite Schmidt and Jones tunes, the acerbically hilarious "Not My Problem" from Celebration. It offers a bit more astringent content than much of the admittedly sugary sentiments in The Fantasticks, but offering a snippet of the laugh out loud lyric by Tom Jones may whet the appetite of some who may not be familiar with this great songwriting team and help to indicate why they've been such a favorite of mine for so long:

God is dead
That's what they said
Done in by Darwin, Marx and Freud
Free are we from Deity
Of course it sort of leaves a little void.

The Fantasticks doesn't offer that kind of "philosophizing," but it has an undeniable charm and well of emotionalism that makes it a deeply affecting experience, at least for those whose cynicism hasn't completely eclipsed their humanity. The film version may well be flawed, but taken on its own terms it has its own distinctive pleasures. This Blu-ray has top notch technical merits and some very appealing supplements, and comes Highly recommended.