Best movie of this year hands down!

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

When Broadway and Hollywood's "Funny Girl" takes on a character who seems to have more lives than Disney's "Thomasina", you know she's going to not only sing out a storm but wear some delightfully lavish costumes, both period and modern. Ms. Streisand didn't just get another big vehicle to show off her enormous talents, but a legendary director who knew a thing or two about movie detail: Vincent Minnelli. Having just completed work with Minnelli's old MGM pal Gene Kelly on "Hello, Dolly!", Barbra added, for her third movie, another movie version of a Broadway musical to her film credit, and if "On a Clear Day" wasn't the smash of the first two on stage, it was certainly a vehicle worthy of her talents."Climb up, geraniums!", she sings gregariously as she dances her way through a flower garden. Is this a music video, movie musical or nature show?, you may wonder as the film begins, but after hearing her voice initially, you wait for the big star entrance, and boy, is she given one. She's on her way to Columbia University to see psychiatrist Yves Montand in an effort to stop smoking, and with their meeting, more is revealed than meets the Marlbrough. Take us back to Charles Dickens era England where we discover one of Streisand's previous lives: She's a female Oliver Twist, brought up in an work house (even seen eating gruel) yet ends up the wife of a wealthy aristocrat clad in a gorgeous beaded and hooded gown which looks like something out of "Metropolis". "Love With All the Trimmings!", she sings over the action as her manicured goddess makes her lust towards a handsome visitor obvious to everybody but the cuckolded husband.Back in 1970 Manhattan, Streisand and psychiatrist Montand have instant rapport, even though Montand is more interested in Streisand's past lives than helping her quit smoking. This leads to the amusing revelation of his true intentions, and Montand is faced with possibly losing his greatest psychiatric discovery once Streisand learns the truth. "Come Back to Me!", he sings from his office window, and this, combined with the fact that she has gained E.S.P. from her meetings with him, makes her unable to sleep. One of the people she encounters during this song is the adorable Judith Lowry ("Phyllis's" Mother Dexter) who must mouth Montand's words to her while Streisand desperately tries to get Montand's voice out of her head.There's plenty of comedy here, but the romantic chemistry between Streisand and Montand is nill. For the most part, he's a handsome but dull partner, giving the impression that perhaps somebody like Louis Jourdan would have been better in this role. Other cast members are wasted, and they include a young Jack Nicholson and a pre-TV Bob Newhart. Amusing with her few scenes is "Bewitched's" Mabel Albertson as Montand's secretary, quite ironic considering her larger part in Streisand's comic masterpiece "What's Up, Doc?".While not perfect, and certainly nowhere near faithful to the original Broadway play (it is certainly a lot better than a recent Broadway revisal), this is at its best when Streisand is either singing, clowning, or clad in outrageous outfits. Minnelli shows he still has a flair for great detail, and even with this not being the smash he had hoped it would be (or the unfortunate misfire of his badly edited "A Matter of Time"), he shows that the magic of his triumphant MGM years had not wained.

In some ways I felt like I enjoyed this movie in spite of myself, or itself. Equally drawn to the film by my admiration of the director Vincente Minnelli and repulsed by its leading lady Barbara Streisand, I find that in the end neither artist contributed his/her best or worst work, and that the whole package itself is mostly lacking in the necessary charm. Yves Montand presents far more problems than Miss Streisand, and Minnelli trips over his own staging to try to make the modern sequences all too modern and the historical sequences all too romantic.Streisand plays Daisy Gamble (a name only a musical comedy doyenne could possibly be saddled with), a young would-be wife who comes to a college psychologist (Montand) in hopes that he can use hypnotism to cure her excessive smoking habit. Instead, the good professor uncovers a whole past life involving a seductress called Melinda, a persona whom the professor promptly and unconvincingly falls in love with.At first it seems refreshing to have Minnelli directing this movie, with his gloriously excessive bouquets conjured up to bring some portion of artificial magic to Daisy's wistful rooftop escape. His style quickly becomes overbearing, especially since he seems to have little taste or comfort with the modern settings and styles he's using. His use of the zoom lens, the only time I can remember him using it, is garish and obvious. An ascending helicopter shot of Montand warbling atop the Pan Am building only manages to distance us from any possible emotion that could be squeezed from his continental charmer. Only in the historical sequences with their incredibly elaborate costuming and real location shots of the Brighton pavilion, does Minnelli momentarily come alive, to live again in the romantic past for one more brief moment.Montand is the glaring problem with the film. His character is completely unappealing and the way he plays him makes it much worse. The more we see of him, the less we appreciate him or can understand why Gamble is becoming infatuated with him. Likewise it's hard to see why Montand is becoming fascinated with the past life Streisand. His whole scheme is very underhanded, since he hasn't told Gamble that he's been recording all her sessions or that he's investigating a past life at all. His motives are supposed to be cleared up thanks to a series of distracting conferences with a professorial colleague oddly played by tough-guy character actor Simon Oakland.When the "good professor" becomes desperate to get Gamble back on his couch and begins sending her psychic messages to "Come Back to Me", the result is less romantic than stalking. Psychic stalking -- it's something that belongs more in a Phillip Dick nightmare sci-fi story than a musical comedy. It's hard to not get a really bad taste in your mouth, especially since the film-makers have already provided a suitably obvious and suitably compatible well, uh, suitor in the person of Daisy's ex-brother-in-law played by Jack Nicholson. We first see Jacko on the roof brazenly strumming his sitar, as if he walked out of the J.C. Penney catalog of hippies. Made-to-order hippy Jack Nicholson apparently got a solo but it was cut when a decision was made not to roadshow this film. Thus even the film's relatively satisfying conclusion seems to be drawn in abstract lines, thanks to Minnelli's liberal style of shooting and the subsequent edits that cripple the film's continuity.As for Miss Streisand herself, she does her best to play the character in a rather sophisticated way but is often undone by her own energy. I didn't feel that she carried off the multiple characters particularly well, and in her solo numbers she heaves and bellows through without any hint of real human vulnerability. She has some good moments as Daisy, but in the Melinda personality she's outclassed by her own headgear.The film itself doesn't really ever rise to the level of its ambition. What should be a fun evening of musical comedy becomes a mere distraction. The story and its characters never really become anything human or convincing. A stifling aura of artfulness prevents the film from taking off -- it's as if all the performers and the director are standing a few feet away from the film they're making. Montand barely seems to know what movie he's in. Lerner and Lane's songs are ponderous and barely memorable. The story itself seems to revisit Lerner's past artistic life, with its Henry Higginsesque professor remonstrating himself and mistreating his naive leading lady in a way that strangely manages to evoke absolutely none of the charm that lifted his Fair Lady above the fray. The film is saved from outright artistic failure thanks to a few imaginative sequences staged by Minnelli, Nicholson's goofy and fun cameo, and a few moments of inspired clowning by Streisand.

Although you would never know it by the scope of the cinematography with its breathtaking shots of New York, topped by Yves Montand singing on top of the World Trade Center, the film version of On A Clear Day You Can See Forever is actually quite an edited version of what was on stage. Having been one of those fortunate enough to see one of the 280 performances during its run in 1965-1966, I can tell you this for a fact. Quite a bit of the Regency England flashbacks is cut out and even some of the modern era numbers.Still On A Clear Day You Can See Forever retains both the title song and Come Back To Me which are the two numbers that have lingered on. Robert Goulet had a big hit record of the latter song, elbowing its way into the charts dominated by the British Rock invasion. The original show starred Barbara Harris and John Cullom and had such worthy folks as Hamilton Camp, William Daniels and Titos Vandis in the cast.As my father's profession was psychology this show was a must item to see in our house. With the powerhouse name of Barbra Streisand now in the lead playing Daisy Gamble, Streisand seeks out noted psychologist Yves Montand to cure her of an incredible five pack a day smoking habit with hypnosis. But under hypnosis Streisand proves to be a remarkable subject, revealing a past life as an Englishwoman of means who didn't always have those means and was quite the the figure during the Regency. She was also hanged as a traitor when her psychic ability to predict disasters at sea made authorities think she was collaborating with the French.Montand's pretty excited about his subject, giving her quite a buildup with colleagues like Simon Oakland and Bob Newhart. In the meantime Montand is falling for some aspect of Streisand, but is it who she is or who she was? As for Streisand she's engaged, kind of, to Larry Blyden who is chasing the everyman suburban dream in America. Blyden's got an interesting character, it's a combination of his own creation Sammy Glick from What Makes Sammy Run and the worst aspects of some of Jack Lemmon's everyman characters from several films. William Daniels played his part on stage.Jack Nicholson plays Streisand's former step brother and I'm surprised because even then Nicholson was a rising star, that he would do such a small part. His scenes are mostly with Streisand, but he's got one devastating scene with Blyden in which in his own droll way, he punctures a lot of his pretensions.This was the next to last film directed by Vincente Minnelli who did a few good musicals in his time and this certainly belongs among them. Though I would have liked to have heard more of the Burton Lane-Alan Jay Lerner score, what was left was sung well indeed by Streisand and Montand. In an age when musical budgets were catastrophic because of the studio system breakdown, all the good ones, in fact just about every one seemed to star the only bankable singers around, Barbra Streisand and Julie Andrews. I'm glad this one got preserved.

It would be easy to dismiss this as The Three Faces Of Eve with songs but it is, actually, a little more than that. Alan Lerner had a lifelong interest in ESP and toyed with the idea of basing a musical on it for years before finally getting around to it in the mid sixties more or less a full decade after My Fair Lady. The Broadway version failed to find its audience but was jam-packed with great numbers (Lerner was again working with Burton Lane with whom he wrote one of the all-time great ballads, 'Too Late Now' for the MGM movie Royal Wedding) most of which the producers have seen fit to jettison leaving the leading man only three numbers but the film is, nevertheless, interesting if only for the chance to see and hear the great Montand working in English. Montand, who learned English late in life, made several films in the English language none of them really satisfactory and whilst at one level the antipathy of most of the posters here is understandable one can't help feeling they are lacking in sensitivity inasmuch as the charm and shining talent of the man are obvious even in a vehicle tailored to his co-star as is this. Streisand is certainly adequate and with Minnelli at the helm she is both costumed and photographed to full advantage but by 1970 sophisticated lyrics like those in What Did I Have were wasted on if not bewildering to an audience educated in punk rock. Despite what the nay-sayers think Montand was worth every dime of the (for the time) silly money that enticed him to cross the Atlantic. Maybe not one to buy (unless you rate even minor Montand as I do) but certainly one to rent.