Mame (1974)

(On Cable TV, April 2019) Seeing the musical remake Mame only two weeks after seeing the original comedy Auntie Mame was clearly not at the 1974 film’s advantage. While the bones of the story have been transported, simplified, heightened, and set to song and dance, the result is far from being as satisfying as even the uneven original, and bring further credence to my assertion that nearly every musical made in the 1970s was terrible. I’ll admit that the story is a difficult one to tell—episodic, scattered across several years, not quite comic throughout—it challenges even the original film. But this adaptation makes it worse. Generations of reviewers have noted how much Lucille Ball is miscast here (critics were so scathing in their initial assessment that it was the last theatrical film that Ball ever made) so I’m not going to pile up. On the other hand, it’s always fun to see Robert Preston show up even in a momentary supporting role. Elsewhere, well, the comedy isn’t funny, the musical numbers feel laborious and the result is more puzzling than exhilarating. I’d like to say that my impressions of Mame would have been higher if I hadn’t just seen Auntie Mame, but I suspect that’s not true—even after acknowledging that it’s a lesser film, it’s obvious that it’s not much of a good one no matter if compared or not.