JinRoz For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

gmonger What makes a musical, is the music. The music in this is excellent. Burt Bacharach and Hal David seldom miss and here they hit on every song. Reflections, The World is a Circle and I Might Frighten Her Away being great songs and routines. I recall, this movie bombed, was panned, by fan and critic alike, when it came out. At the time, the 70's, musicals were not a hot topic. Unless you were making a gritty, realistic, musical, like Cabaret, you were going against the grain. Dancing and prancing people seemed strange in this time of Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy and grittier films of the era. The movie was mistimed to be sure, because there isn't anything more ridiculous in this, than any of the great musicals of years past, be it prancing, knife wielding, gang members, to store clerks, to lions, to scare crows.I am sure the great actors, known so much more so for drama, than a musical, threw off the public. Seeing Ullmann, Finch, Kellerman, York, and Kennedy especially, so often playing the heavy, in lighter roles was different. But guess what? They are all great actors and pull it off completely.If you have read any of my reviews you know I review lesser known or disparaged movies that I feel deserve a lot better fate. Why review, for the one millionth time, Casablanca, Spartacus, Network, or Gone With the Wind? Guess what? They are great and considered so for a very real reason.Lost Horizon, on it's own is one of the best musicals made and a great telling of the classic story. The B & W, Ronald Coleman version , as good as it is , is flawed due to the lost footage and the scars the film has due to it's repair. This musical version, is the best version of Lost Horizon, I recommend giving it a try . I guarantee you will be whistling the songs soon after.

atlasmb Do you ever get the feeling that some of the creators in Hollywood, when looking for a story to turn into a musical, are looking for a challenge? Or maybe their minds instantly turn to the most successful dramatic films? "Grand Hotel", for example. "Battle of the Bulge, the Musical" cannot be far behind."Lost Horizon" was ripe for the picking, I guess. And maybe someone saw a parallel with "The King and I" with its scenes of Asian courtly life? The result is an uneven musical. It has been noted that Bacharach and David were on the verge of breaking up their partnership when they wrote the score for "Lost Horizon". But we have to wonder if their pop sensibility was appropriate for this project.The cast is another issue, but the script does not make great demands on the actors, so perhaps the casting is not so important. Most surprising is Olivia Hussey ("Romeo and Juliet"), who can sing and dance. From today's perspective, it is rather fun to see who appears in this film. Sally Kellerman ("M.A.S.H."), George Kennedy ("Cool Hand Luke"), Peter Finch ("Two For the Road"), Michael York ("Logan's Run"), and Liv Ullman (?).The story is Jules Verne-ish--travelers discover a strange, isolated world that has mystical properties. Then a love story ensues: As the new arrivals to this world are walking up a flight of steps outside a huge lamasery, our protagonist looks up and sees a woman standing on a balcony about, oh, a quarter mile away. He is enthralled by her beauty, or at least what he can discern of it. She looks down at the large group ascending the stairs and sees one of the men stumble. He is embarrassed, but she chuckles and they instantly fall in love. We have all been there.Mix in some lengthy walks in treacherous Himalayan blizzards and some light-hearted tunes sung (and danced to) by Bobby Van, and you have "Lost Horizon", the film that wants to be everything to everybody but ends up being lost in its own murky vision.

info-12388 I wont belabour the plot: if you don't know it by now, then you've been living under a rock for these past 80 years.But what truly amazed me on watching this is how much it lifts — in terms of adaptation, photography, entire chunks of dialogue — right out of the Colman version. It's as though someone sent Larry Kramer (the sorta screenwriter) the script used in the 30s and told him to rewrite... but not too much. So a couple of characters are revisited — the paleontologist becomes a stand up comedian, the investor becomes an engineer — but everything else is taken, almost shot for shot and line for line, from the earlier film. In some cases — such as the cave at the end where (SPOILER) the young girl's actual age is revealed — it's like they even went so far as to use the same set.And the sad thing is that the earlier one was no masterful adaption itself: talky, almost proselytizing at times, it rearranges things in HIlton's novel to suit some unseen agenda — and Ross Hunter blithely continues down whatever path that might have been, making many of the same mistakes, but on a larger, grander scale: for example, the lamasery in Colman's version looks like it's right out of the NY World's Fair of 1939, while the one in Hunter's film, while a simple re-build of the castle from CAMELOT, looks larger, grander, and much more incongruous for a Himalayan valley. The musical numbers... sigh. They range from the moderately acceptable to the egregiously awful. The "Fertility Dance" in the middle of "Living Together" is one of those "You really have to see it to believe it" moments, while Bobby Van's "Question Me an Answer", despite its American-centric approach, almost makes the cut as reasonably fun and enjoyable. To be honest, he looks like the only one there having a good time. The rest appear, at times, downright embarrassed to be taking part. But if anything else, the musical numbers, inserted with all the finesse of a sledgehammer, underscore how much this thing owes to not the book but the previous film. Cut them out and watch it with the Colman side by side, and you will be amazed at how audacious the theft is. I'm giving it a three only for Van and Boyer, whose scenes as the High Lama are at least watchable.Someday, someone will do a film of this book that actually rises to the lovely brilliance of the original source material. This one, sadly, is not it.

rmcatalina Lost Horizon is not nearly as bad as the box office numbers would suggest. Its chief failing is the audience comes to see Shangri-La and sees, well, Burbank. Actually, it looks more like the Huntington Gardens. It would have been better to improve upon the book's shortcomings rather than try to recreate it. Perhaps a "Wizard of Oz"-like plot, where all of the people meet along parallel paths to Shangri-La, only to discover their real sanctuary was where they came from. I remember getting a preview copy of the album quite some time before the film was released. I loved the music, but would have to agree the vocal performances are a disaster. But, I was looking forward to seeing it in the theater. At nearly 2.5 hours in its roadshow release, I was checking my watch about 45 minutes into the piece. Even when I watch it on DVD today, there are large sections I fast forward through. As others have noted, why didn't Ross Hunter hire people who could sing in the key roles? Probably studio pressure for "bankable" stars who were "hot" at the time. No doubt someone also observed Bacharach & David are pop song writers, and you don't need to be a very good vocalist to sing pop--right? Well, the more recent musical disaster, the aptly named "Mamma Mia!" ABBA tribute also suffered from dreadful vocal performances. So much for the "anyone can sing pop" theory. Make no mistake, Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan are fine actors, but they should never the be the leads in a musical! Why not cast Glenn Close?But back to "Lost Horizon," I think the other problem is by the time this was released in 1972, the music and presentation were considered dated or "old school." Similar complaints were leveled at Hunters 1970 film "Airport"--calling it "old fashioned filmmaking."So, you've got three things working against the film: a dull plot, dated music, and principal vocalists who can't sing. Now some have commented that the Hollywood musical was dead by 1972. There were some other big features that only had mediocre results at this time, but just 6 years later, "Grease," with a budget of just $6 million, earned almost $400 million at the box office. No doubt it was helped by a couple of hit singles, but there was certainly some audience interest still out there. Disney seems to have found a formula that appeals to a new generation with its "High School Musical" series and its forthcoming "Teen Beach Musical." Several of the studio's animated musical features have been remade into successful Broadway musicals. Time will tell if there is a revival of interest in big budget, big screen musicals with principals who can actually sing.