Here's the right thread...
Funny Face
Though this movie has a few strong features--its visual style is striking enough for a 100-minute musical--I am unable to get over the fact that a) the two romantic leads have a 30-year gap in age and b) the movie asks me to buy into the idea that Audrey Hepburn could ever be less than incredibly beautiful. I know, regarding the latter, that this is a problem plaguing a lot of romantic comedies (we could qualify this specifically as a problem I need to ignore, but I so wish studio execs would stop assuming female romantic leads need to be thought of or assume themselves to be undesirable). But the story didn't engage me much. If anything, it felt like a Hollywood response to the trend of beatniks in Greenwich Village who learn that being dressed up all nice and fancy is what they really want. The music and dances were fine, though unremarkable (except for the Hepburn dance that was, I guess, immortalized in those Gap ads a few years back). I love musicals as a genre, but this was a fairly flaccid entry.
2/4