Search - The Fantasticks on DVD

MPAA Rating: PG Content Advisory: Adult Humor Movie Release: 1995 DVD Release: 02/27/2001 Format: DVD - Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV Edition: Special Collection Audio Tracks: English, French, Spanish Subtitles: French, Spanish SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 27 mins Studio: MGM Members Wishing: 0 Genres: Musical, Romance, Musical Comedy, Musical Romance

The longest-running show in the history of the American theater (it opened at an off-Broadway theater in the spring of 1960, where it remained until the production finally closed in early 2002) finally arrives onscreen. Hucklebee (Brad Sullivan) and Bellamy (Joel Grey) are a pair of small town fathers who are scheming to bring their children Matt (Joseph McIntyre) and Luisa (Jean Louisa Kelly) together in a romance. As a carnival arrives to bring some excitement to the sleepy village, the fathers persuade a mysterious interloper named El Gallo (Jonathan Morris) to stage a mock abduction of Luisa, which will hopefully prompt Matt to come to her rescue. However, while El Gallo's plan succeeds, he also awakens his innocent charges to the darker and more disappointing side of love. The Fantasticks was shot and edited in 1995, but beyond a few preview screenings, it went unreleased until the fall of 2000. The film marked the dramatic debut of former New Kids on the Block vocalist Joseph McIntyre, and features Teller (of the magic/performance art duo Penn & Teller) in a rare speaking role. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Joel Grey - Bellamy
Barnard Hughes - Henry
Jean Louisa Kelly - Luisa
Joseph McIntyre - Matt
Jonathon Morris - El Gallo

This is one unexpected DVD, and a delightful one as well, and one of the most entertaining releases in the format. When Michael Ritchie's movie of The Fantasticks opened in the fall of 2000, it had been sitting on a shelf for five years, and was considered missing-in-action by most observers. Why it was held up is anyone's guess, but the movie proved a delight, one of the more clever cinematic adaptations of a stage musical to appear in several decades. It was gone from theaters in a few weeks and not mentioned again until this DVD turned up. The mix of the beguiling score and the guileless story -- a reversal of Romeo and Juliet that sort of anticipates The Princess Bride -- taken into the vast Arizona locales of the film, with the expanded scoring for the music, was enchanting in a theater and it works stunningly on DVD as well.
The film-to-video transfer is gorgeous, every color tone captured perfectly and some of it, such as the carnival in the background of the woods as the boy and girl sing "Soon It's Gonna Rain," is absolutely aglow in a perfectly appropriate way. Indeed, the carnival sequences are a veritable explosion of radiant color. The makers also paid careful attention to the sound, in the theatrical edition and even more so here -- the stereo separation is carefully balanced to create an illusion of spaciousness in keeping with the expansion of the original play from the theater stage. The music is also beautifully balanced, capturing the lyricism of numbers like "Metaphor" and the harder sound of "I Can See It" with equal vibrancy. The letterboxing also allows the viewer to fully appreciate the cleverness of various elements of the design of the film, particularly the juxtaposing of the two houses of the contending families and the use of the silent film in the background of "Metaphor." The montage accompanying "Round and Round" also makes full use of the Panavision screen and can only really be appreciated that way. The cast is perfect, with Jonathon Morris energizing the whole film in his performance as El Gallo, and Joe McIntyre and Jean Louisa Kelly ideal as the young couple who move from innocence to experience and nearly lose their love in the process.
If this disc contained only the movie, it would be worth the list price, but there are more than two hours of dazzling bonus material appended to the film. The songs that had to be deleted from the original score and entire scenes that were dropped -- including the first appearance of "Try to Remember" at the opening of the movie -- are included in their entirety; the introductory version of "Try to Remember" ought to have been included, if only for the visual unity that it would have set up with the finale; "Plant a Radish" is such a delightful romp by Joel Grey and Brad Sullivan that losing it was a shame, but at least it's on the disc; and "The Rape Song," as composed for the original 1960 production, which has since been replaced to accommodate contemporary sensibilities about the word "rape," was shot as a finished number. Another part of the supplement features extended versions of songs that made it into the film in edited versions, which is simply a matter of the producers conjuring extra slices into a very delicious cake. The best feature of all, however, is the secondary audio commentary by director Michael Ritchie, who walks us through every shot, every change in the script and story from the original, every line of every song, and the entire genesis of the play from its 1960 origins to 1995 and the making of the movie. He tells how the film ended up being shot in the same Arizona valley where Fred Zinnemann's Oklahoma! was made in the 1950s, and how he managed to get a silent Romeo and Juliet made for a key scene without a budget for any of it -- and he goes into the psychology of his characters, in what has to be one of the finest, most detailed, and delightfully involved commentary tracks by a director yet heard for home viewing. Ritchie explains the switch from "The Rape Song" in the original play to "The Abduction Song," but one gets the real sense -- borne out by the fact that the original was also shot -- that he loves the original with a genuine passion. His account of how Joel Grey and Brad Sullivan ended up singing live is fascinating, and he has a real sense of his actors and what their full capabilities were, including Jonathon Morris' essential experience in pantomime acting. He also gives a breakdown of how shots from a Los Angeles soundstage and an Arizona valley were intercut seamlessly in the same scene. His narration is so full of information and delivered with such joy that it can be played repeatedly without any wearing out of its welcome. It's also a compelling experience to hear an artist who obviously loves his subject delight in getting inside of it on two levels -- the play in the course of making the movie, and the movie in discussing its creation here. It's all a stunning 87 minutes of movie and many days of supplementary treats, accessible through a simple, easy-to-navigate menu that vividly maps out the bonus materials in several layers. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide