I came to this movie expecting a full-scale professional performance, encouraged by the presence of authentic Savoyard Martyn Green in the cast (he plays Ko-Ko). But this movie adaptation is pretty far gone. For the first 20 minutes Schertzinger channels Quentin Tarantino: He gives us a capsule summary of the whole plot, followed by a flashback to Nanki-Poo's departure from court (including "If you want to know who we are" and some dialogue pilfered from Act II). Then Nanki-Poo sings the first verse of "The sun whose rays" -- Yum-Yum's song from Act II -- just to mix things up a bit. After that it settles down with a classical "Wand'ring Minstrel I" (interrupted only by one Village-of-the-Damned-looking little girl tugging on Nanki-Poo's sleeve during "Oh, sorrow").
Green's Ko-Ko and Sydney Granville's Pooh-Bah are reasonable facsimiles of the stage roles, although they do manage to botch most of Gilbert's jokes with a wooden delivery -- and in many cases the punch lines are simply cut out! (Note to screenwriter: "On the Marine Parade!" isn't funny in isolation, you know.) John Barclay's Mikado is appropriately diabolical, although his evil laughs are curtailed by the cutting of "A more human Mikado"'s middle half. Kenny Baker's Nanki-Poo is an inoffensive tenor (contradiction in terms?); Yum-Yum, on the other hand, sounds like one of the Chipmunks in most of her songs.
The songs also suffer. Whose idea was it to throw random church-bell sound effects over the singers in the madrigal? Most detrimentally, "I've got a little list" is cut entirely, as is Katisha's Act II solo, and "Our great Mikado" is shortened by a verse (which renders the lyrics more than a little confusing). To fill the resulting dead air, we get an encore of Ko-Ko's part of "The flowers that bloom in the spring" (yes, with even Nanki-Poo enthusiastically belting out "Oh, bother the flowers of spring!") and an awful lot of random shots of people entering and exiting. Blame the cuts on budget or censorship (or having no idea, or not being there) -- you can't blame them on time constraints.
Schertzinger's "Mikado" was the first in a planned series of Pinewood G&S adaptations. One good thing to come out of the Blitz: It was also the last!
Green's Ko-Ko and Sydney Granville's Pooh-Bah are reasonable facsimiles of the stage roles, although they do manage to botch most of Gilbert's jokes with a wooden delivery -- and in many cases the punch lines are simply cut out! (Note to screenwriter: "On the Marine Parade!" isn't funny in isolation, you know.) John Barclay's Mikado is appropriately diabolical, although his evil laughs are curtailed by the cutting of "A more human Mikado"'s middle half. Kenny Baker's Nanki-Poo is an inoffensive tenor (contradiction in terms?); Yum-Yum, on the other hand, sounds like one of the Chipmunks in most of her songs.
The songs also suffer. Whose idea was it to throw random church-bell sound effects over the singers in the madrigal? Most detrimentally, "I've got a little list" is cut entirely, as is Katisha's Act II solo, and "Our great Mikado" is shortened by a verse (which renders the lyrics more than a little confusing). To fill the resulting dead air, we get an encore of Ko-Ko's part of "The flowers that bloom in the spring" (yes, with even Nanki-Poo enthusiastically belting out "Oh, bother the flowers of spring!") and an awful lot of random shots of people entering and exiting. Blame the cuts on budget or censorship (or having no idea, or not being there) -- you can't blame them on time constraints.
Schertzinger's "Mikado" was the first in a planned series of Pinewood G&S adaptations. One good thing to come out of the Blitz: It was also the last!