barry-woods

This film has both good and bad components. The good: in many ways it is haunts and eats after you, and after the film one feels very dejected. This bad feeling hangs around with you for a long time after you watch it. Sadness for the lives lost, sadness for the engineers who tried to stop the launch but couldn't and anger at Morton-Thikol and NASA management.

Also good was befitting musical score that fit the film perfectly. Even the very well done opening titles/credits set the tone of the tone of the film and puts the viewer in a somber state.

On the bad side: poorly written dialogue, at times, sophomoric acting, with the exception of the lead, Eric Hanson. He does a very good job even with some dialogue that sounds as if it were written by a novice student in a creative writing class. Although the material is engrossing, your mind never truly forgets you are watching a film, and a rather amateur attempt, at a film. The director has little clue about pacing or how to get uniformity in acting from the casts. Even Dean Cain comes across no better than a a high school kid in a class production.

The characters come across as caricatures instead of real life characters. Yet amazingly, because you know it's a true and sad story, you accept all the amateur production values and get emotionally involved. If nothing else it is educational, and I think everyone should see it.

Now days this is literally nothing. In a major motion picture this would be the salary of just one minor player. The low production costs explain the problems with the film. Had it been given a large budget, a reputable director and a class writer, it would have been an A+ film. I don't want to denigrate this film, as considering the budge, it was as well done as could possibly have been.. As mentioned the opening credits are very professional and set the stage, and most of the visual elements are quite well done.

The film never mentions the name of the actual rocket booster contractor, presumably because of a potential lawsuit against the filmakers. The contractor who made the rocket boosters was Morton-Thiokol of Utah. Yes, the same Morton Ccompany that puts salt on your dinner table was the company that also murdered seven astronauts The top management of Morton-Thikol overrode the the recommendations of its engineers that the launch should be postponed until the outdoor temperatures at Cape Canaveral had risen.

By all means, watch this movie. Just try to not concentrate on its amateur dialogue, acting and direction, but concentrate on the message it is presenting. There is something we should all learn from this film..... never be pressure by others to not do what we know is right.

Let's look at the Good, and the Bad: 1.) The Good: Beautiful Music. The theme song is beautifully written and very meaningful. The background music, at times is quite beautiful. There are actually some catchy tunes in there as well.

The photography is wonderful, with the tone set at the beginning of the movie with the unforgettable shot of the train travelling through snow covered countryside accompanied by a hauntingly beautiful musical score.

2.) The Bad: ACTING. If you can call it that. It gives the appearance of being acted by a bunch of high schoolers doing a play. Actually, I have seen high school students do a much better acting job come to think of it. Patty Duke overacts all over the place, and quite laughably (by her own admission). Sharon Tate, bless her soul, acts like she is reading her lines off of a teleprompter and someone behind the camera is telling her each move to make. ("take a step, look to your right, sigh, etc.) Maybe most hysterical of all is a fine actress like Susan Hayward, (bless her as well), when she is lip-sinking her song, "I'll Plant My Own Tree." First of all the voice doesn't match at all. Secondly, she overacts it so badly and goes into such body contortions that you don't even notice the lyrics due to your laughing.

Her performance goes downhill even further (if its possible) when she says to Patty Duke (Neely) "Now get out of my way I got a man waiting for me!" Even an amateur high school actor trying out for a role looks like a professional by comparison to her performance here.

Even Martin Milner overacts and continues the tradition of cardboard cutout characters with cardboard acting.

Also Bad: The director. Mark Robson couldn't direct an actor out of a paper bag. He must have been on drugs when he attempted to convert his vision of the book to the screen. As Patty Duke said, this could have been made into a meaningful film.

It's wasn't. The bottom line is the bad acting, the lude references and actions, done for effect, over character development and the superficiality of it all falls in the lap of the director. He alienated, and ultimately fired Judy Garland, who was to originally play Susand Hayward's role.

And from what Patty Duke said, in an interview he treated all the women actors (especially Sharon Tate) like unintelligent bimbos, which they weren't. Robson was the bimbo. How in the world could he watch the dailies in the screening room and think he had done a good job??? How could the producers have released this? Did they not do a test screening and check for audience reaction? Patty Duke says she and her friends occasionally order a pizza and have a "Valley of the Dolls night" and watch the movie and make fun of it. She has also attended at least one of the camp showings where the audience shows up dressed as Valley of the Dolls characters and leers and jeers at the film.

Jacqueline Susann certainly was not a literary genius. In fact, she was just a trashy novelist and was a bad actress herself. But her work was not nearly as bad as the film by a long shot. But in all fairness there are a few touching moments in her book, and unbelievably even in the film itself.

Despite it all, Valley of the Dolls is an entertaining movie. I, and many others I hear, enjoy watching it. It provides some good laughs as professional actors behave like untalented high schoolers acting in a badly written play. Yet, there are some scenes that are emotionally satisfying and moving. Where Sharon Tate, as Jennifer, passes away and also the ending where Barbara Parkins goes back to her home and becomes her own person. The last scene of her walking away from her lover and goes off by herself in the woods, leaves the viewer with a good feeling and maybe even a bit of a catharsis. She rose above it all and got away.

So Valley of the Dolls is not without merit. And it is certainly worth watching. Whether you watch it as a comedy with the bad acting and the world's worst directing, or you manage to overlook that and enjoy the beautiful music, scenery and photography. You leave with the message the film was trying to make (although badly) that beauty is not everything, money does not bring happiness and we can overcome and be our own person.

(BTW. Carol Curnett did a great parody of Valley of the Dolls in her TV show in 1967 when the movie came out. It's hilarious. Be sure to find a copy.)