Too Many Trombones

The Music Man is overacted, overcute, overloud and overlong. In this movie, a parade is not just a parade; it resembles the massed phalanxes that troop past the Communist bigwigs in Red Square, with zest and joy beaming from every brainwashed face. A song is not just a song; thanks to a noisy collection of 211 instruments, among them trombones, double bell euphoniums, bassoons, and glockenspiels. Music Man is a hard-sell blast aimed at the eardrums of a new breed, presumably stereophonic man. Like many a cinemusical extravaganza, Music Man operates on the principle that an audience that is hit hard enough, often enough, can be reduced to a pulp of pleasure.

The film is as faithful as a slave to Meredith Willson's Broadway hit musical. Indeed, at one point a theater spotlight is used to light up the hero and his girl, with the rest of the screen in darkness. The hero is Professor Harold Hill (Robert Preston), a 1912 conman in the corn-belt town of River City, Iowa. Preston's tactic is to whip up enthusiasm in small towns for starting a brass band, sucker parents into buying the instruments and uniforms, and then skip out without teaching the young Sousaphiles a note. Preston is a musical illiterate but a one-man school of charm. As the music money pours in, he collects romantic interest from the town librarian (Shirley Jones), who is suspicious but susceptible. Inevitably, the love of this well-bodiced bookmarm turns Preston into a pie-eyed piper.

With this spindle-thin plot, Music Man needs every available prop of period nostalgia, from Fourth of July fireworks to Wells Fargo wagons. The trouble is that the movie wobbles continually between sentiment, satire and satiety; one barbershop-quartet number is a treat; half a dozen are a trial. Robert Preston nonetheless puts enough showmanly sizzle into a revival-styled pitch called Trouble and the celebrated Seventy-Six Trombones to make at least part of the 2 1/2 hours roll by like enchanted minutes. The Music Man is only funny by fidgets, but lip-curling Hermione Gingold, looking like Nero somewhat past his prime, does small comic wonders in the role of a born vulgarian with cultural longings, and the mayor of River City, Paul Ford, runs amusingly off at the mouth as a kind of Mr. Malaprop.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.