The Blue Bird

I loved this movie as a child. I would love to see it again and share it with my children. It is a wonderful movie for children and the young at heart. I like it much better than the Shirley Temple version.

The first co-production between USSR and Hollywood would have to be this strange kiddie film that is so icky sweet, it makes "Barney" look like "Penthouse Forum" in comparison! Some kids meet up with their fairy Godmother (Elizabeth Taylor dressed like a Mafia wife gone insane). With a wave of her magic wand, household pets, and inanimate objects come to life. The most disgusting has to be what happens to a pitcher of milk! It turns into a ballerina. To remind audiences of its milk origins, whenever the ballerina dances, we hear milk splash in a pitcher. It sounds as if the poor ballerina has a stomach disorder! The story goes that the production of this film was very rough. It went on forever. Jane Fonda supposedly kept on pestering the Russian workers, and it became an expensive mess.

I watched this last night, taped it off a TCM showing. This film is a lot better than reviewers said. I'd say it's a must-see for Elizabeth Taylor fans. She obviously enjoyed her roles. Patsy Kensit is simply adorable in this. The film has deep, yet surreally portrayed concepts involving life and death, sin and love. Certainly perfect for young children with a strong moral philosophy. The story is fantasy, some sets are better than others, it's all very colorful and has an early 19th century feel. If you are a student of set construction, choreography, ballet in film, or escapes to alternate realities, you will enjoy this perhaps more than you think you should.

This musical version of "The Blue Bird" is highly reminiscent of those awful, English-dubbed "Pippi Longstocking" movies from Sweden, where everyone is manic, grinning, out of step and out of tune. The same clueless qualities are on display here, only this picture was directed by George "My Fair Lady" Cukor and co-stars Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner, Cicely Tyson and Jane Fonda! Filmed in Russia (with the assistance of a Russian crew and Russian rubles), it's a remake of the Shirley Temple chestnut from 1940, adapted from the play by Maurice Maeterlinck, and literally defies explanation. Amateurish--and yet fascinatingly so--the movie is heavier than bricks and is never seamless; it feels patched together by a child's hands. I remember watching this on HBO many years ago several times, always in stunned, mind-numbing shock. Taylor (in four roles!) goofs around a little and she's fun to watch, Fonda has a pithy few seconds as Night, and Robert Morley is energetic without camping it up as Father Time; everyone else is out to sea. Forgettable, needless songs by Irwin Kostal and Andrei Petrov. Connoisseurs of bad cinema should feast on this for ages. Hey, terrible flicks can be fun, too. ** from ****

I remember hearing the horrendous reviews when this film was originally released. Thirty-three years later, I finally managed to actually see it on YouTube. My, oh, my. Considering the budget and talent involved, it is indeed one of the worst films ever made. Most often, it comes across as a filmed stage play - one with incredibly bad performances. The technical aspects are well below par. The whole naive "political" background actually makes the film even more annoying...did these people actually think that they were performing some sort of noble gesture, bringing the world's superpowers together? If you haven't seen this, really, I suggest that you skip it. It might play as "good bad," if you've had a few drinks with friends. But watching this sober, is just plain tedious.