Young Bart Collins lives in middle-class comfort with his widowed mom Heloise. The bane of his existence is his martinet piano teacher, Dr. Terwilliker; the movie opens with Bart asleep at the piano, in the middle of a dream that he is being chased through a surreal landscape by several men with large, colorful nets. Tewilliker wakes him up and chastises him for falling asleep while practicing Terwilliker's "Happy Fingers" exercises. After Dr. T leaves, Bart's mom leaves to go shopping and, like Dr. T, exhorts him to keep playing. The only sympathetic person around is the plumber, August Zabladowski, who is in the kitchen fixing the sink. Once again, Bart nods off at the piano and has an even more surreal dream. Bart is imprisoned in theTerwilliker Institute, forced to practice constantly and soon to take his place in a huge concert involving 500 boys playing a gigantic auditorium-sized piano. His mom, seemingly under hypnosis, works for Dr. T and is soon to be married to him. Bart's only friend is August, who somewhat reluctantly serves as a father figure, even has he has to get all the plumbing in the Institute finished so the civil inspectors will let the place open for the arrival of the other 499 boys. But soon the two are working together and they invent a sound-capturing device to use at the concert that they hope will pull the piano music out the air and ruin the concert.
Often, the books and movies we consume when we are young remain favorites of ours for the rest of our lives; even when, as adults, we can see their weaknesses, we still enjoy them, perhaps out of a sense of nostalgia. I have a very fond memory of seeing this movie on TV when I was 11 or 12 and laid up at home for a week with the flu, and was quite taken with the adventure and fantasy elements. When this was first released on home video in the 90s, I bought a copy and was sorely disappointed. Now, after another 25 years, I've watched it again and this time my feelings have moderated a bit. The film has become a cult classic, largely due to the wild production design by Dr. Seuss, who also co-wrote the screenplay. In terms of production, the movie is certainly more than watchable, with a visual vibe similar to that of the later Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: the giant piano, a huge curved ladder that leads nowhere, two roller-skating men with conjoined beards, dazzling sets, colorful costumes, and a wild dance number held in a dungeon featuring zombie-like musicians (pictured at right) are all worth seeing. Unfortunately, the story is muddled without a coherent theme; is this musical—with mostly unmemorable songs—actually anti-music? Anti-parents? Anti-fascist? The performances are all over the map. Rettig is fine as the boy and old pro Conried gives it a good shot as Dr. T, though there is still room for him to go further over the top. The best song by far is the campy "Do-Mi-Do Duds," sung by Conried while he's getting dressed by his assistants: "I want my undulating undies with the marabou frills/I want my beautiful bolero with the porcupine quills." But Mary Healy is unmemorable as the mom (slightly better as the fantasy mom who gets to be a little wicked) and her real-life husband Peter Lind Hayes is pretty bad as August; drab and passive, giving us no confidence in his skills as a hero, a father figure, or even as a plumber. I know the character is supposed to grow into his better self but Hayes plays August with the same low-energy level all the way through. August does get the best line: listening to Bart complain about parents, he replies,"If kids had their way, almost no parents would be born at all." Having said all that, I still enjoyed watching the movie—at 90 minutes, it doesn't quite wear out its welcome—though I think to some degree, I'm still experiencing it as the movie that captivated me as a child. I'm a little surprised that, with all the Seuss movies of the last few years, a remake has never been done. [TCM]
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