FUNNY GIRL (1968) *** When you already know how long it's going to be, and that there's going to be lots of singing, and that Barbra Streisand is probably going to do most of it, that takes away the things that most pe-...that some people would complain about it. I don't mind Barbra's singing, but detest much of her material, but...it's not that this stuff is particularly better than usual (there's nothing in it to touch "The Way We Were"), but it is a little better, and it's fitted relatively seamlessly into the narrative. Of course Barbra can be a tremendous dramatic actress, of a particularly unique and unusual and silly stripe, and the part is her, no matter whom they claim it is. For an actress who deals in spontaneity, however premeditated, the importance of that can't be over-estimated. It's also nice that Omar Sharif is so adept at the gentleman gambler, and that the energy between the two is so entirely believable. So much so that it seems to continue even when she's singing. At heart it's not a love story I don't think, and certainly not a musical, but a meditation on suffering. It would be too easy to say that Barbra communicates this to the audience by singing at them, and too funny not to, but it's also true that more sensible and real things are said, too. They say it's a true story, and it's one of those ones that's true even if it never happened.
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