THE SLIPPER AND THE ROSE: THE STORY OF CINDERELLA (1976) *1/2 When you turn on a Cinderella movie, and you see that Richard Chamberlain gets top billing, and you continue, you deserve whatever happens to you. There are precious few reasons to make a movie like this, and none demand epic length. The best of it is the senility of the dowager queen (Edith Evans), and the king (Michael Hordern) is pretty funny too. The monarchy can be good for comic relief, which makes it all the more irritating that the Queen of England does so little for her subjects in this regard. If we needed more ridiculous and constipated idiocy it's easy enough to flick on the business channel. Too bad-the film, too-though not particularly the film. I'm not a musicals kind of guy, but in the early going there were several fairly clever songs. The acting is all good: Richard Chamberlain impressive as the ambivalent but despairing prince, Gemma Craven winsome as Cinderella. The problem, a main one, is that no sooner have they exhausted their supply of decent musical numbers than they flail headlong into what must be a nearly hour-long orgy of truly terrible torch songs that couldn't illuminate an anthole, demonstrated to the accompaniment of like choreographic counterpoint in which everyone seems to be trying to flip up their hindlegs in a manner even more absurd than their partner. To make matters even worse, once they finally pull out of that fall they turn directly into an avenue of "fairytale political realism," no doubt to illuminate the difficult plight of the fairy godmother, or maybe on the realization that despite entirely addictive behavior they've neglected to turn their soft lens on a swing. More than enough to make you wish that the damn Mongol hordes would just sweep through the pathetic kingdom and wash them all away. Not that I'm suggesting a sequel.
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