How anyone can sit through this beats me. I tried for 90 minutes and could take no more

My goodness! I saw this film as a child and I can only think I must have been VERY young because I liked it and that was the reason I bought the DVD so see it again. Well, some films should remain in memory land and this one is a good example! It starts our quite interesting, with a crime story at the bottom which is very unusually for a musical.Julie Andrews is doing her best but no one can help such a silly screenplay. Almost every joke is blown up out of any proportions. And some actors, especially the male ones, seemed to have forgotten to act at all. James Fox's character has the depth of a cardboard cut-out and all he does is smiling almost entirely throughout the picture. Where is the guy who played in "The Servant"? I would have liked to kick him just to get an honest reaction out of him.John Gavin was never much of an actor but here he is really miserable. In some scenes near the end he "freezes" by being treated with some poison and he doesn't look very different from when he is not freezing! But also Carole Channing's role is such a painful character, singing and smiling and talking absolute nonsense. The whole film is at least an hour too long and such a mixture of good and bad, but the bad far exceeding! The Chinese are the criminals and the (officially) stupid people of the story and their subplot about the kidnapping of young white girls is somehow odd because it changes from being taken serious to being the source of ridicule and therefore not really fitting in with the silliness of the rest of the story. Unbelievable, that it was quite a success when it came out!

I can usually tell if I'm going to enjoy a movie within the first 20 mins. This one took the opening sequence. The hammy performance of Beatrice Lille in the elevator was the first sign. That was followed by Julie Andrews being extra cute and the comic overkill of her transformation into a flapper. The haircut would've been enough but no we had to see her buy shoes, necklaces, a hat etc. on and on. So I thought Mary Tyler Moore would liven things up . She has a charming voice that I love. When she spoke I was shocked. It sounded dubbed, and she looked drugged. Very disappointing. That left only the very lame male leads and the hideous Carol Channing. At that point I gave up (approx 17 mins). Hopefully others will not have to suffer and just avoid this movie altogether. Also what's so musical/whimsical about white slavery?

Since the success of Tom Jones in 1963 it wasn't just arty gangster flicks and kitchen sink dramas that were being done in "new wave" style. Mainstream cinema was suddenly swept by a fad of snappy editing, split-screen effects, freeze frames, etc, etc, etc. It was only a matter of time before that uniquely Hollywood genre – the musical – got that trendy overhaul. And Thoroughly Modern Millie is not just any musical; it's a vehicle for Julie Andrews, perhaps the last of the old-style studio-bound Hollywood superstars. But funnily enough, it works rather well.You see, the trouble with so many of these new wave pictures is they treat cinematic form as a set of toys, playing around with camera tricks but forgetting things like bringing out acting performances and not giving the audience a headache. However this is a musical, and so it takes place in a world where everything is a bit unreal and over-the-top anyway. And Thoroughly Modern Millie is an incredibly wild and wacky comedy of a musical, full of cartoony characters, impossible stunts and off-the-wall in-jokes. A somewhat extravagant technical style is not so much a distraction – it is more a positive necessity to keep pace with the madcap world in which the story takes place.And thank goodness for the good taste of director George Roy Hill. He keeps most of the visual excesses to the musical numbers, or to unobtrusive (and very funny) stand-alone gags such as the three-way split screen when Miss Flannery is listening on a phone call. He doesn't bother with any camera acrobatics in the normal dialogue scenes, which are shot with his usual simplicity and clarity. His use of characters looking straight into the camera, or jokes where the humour is all in a well-timed cut remind me a lot of the silent pictures of Ernst Lubitsch and Rene Clair. As in Tom Jones we also get silent movie-style title cards, but at least here they fit in with the 1920s setting.Thoroughly Modern Millie sees Julie Andrews at the height of her popularity, and after her prim and chaste star-making turns in Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, revealing yet more strings to her bow. She shows yet-unheard vocal skills in "Trinkt Le Chaim", as well as a real flair for silly comedy. I don't know how James Fox ended up being cast as Jimmy since he is by no means an obvious choice, especially to play an American, but he works, displaying a kind of cheeky charm that makes us warm to him. The smaller roles are all perfectly cast. Beatrice Lillie is fantastic, like some cartoon villain, and is it me, or does she in one of her cod-Chinese tirades call her sidekick a "foo king fool"? The usually straight-playing John Gavin is absolutely hilarious as a caricature of the suave James Bond type. And of course Carol Channing is superb, her unique way of moving perfectly styled for the rendition of "Jazz Baby". Really the picture belongs to these delightful supporting players, unable to carry a picture but fully capable of stealing a scene or two.And perhaps this is really the only serious problem with Thoroughly Modern Millie. What with all the varied delights of its wonderful cast and cunning sight gags, it ceases to really be a Julie Andrews picture. It doesn't really allow her to connect with audiences in the way she usually did – there is simply too much else going on. As such, Thoroughly Modern Millie is certainly entertaining from beginning to end, and even has occasional moments of genius, but it lacks the romantic enchantment that makes a truly classic musical.