Funny Lady

1975 "How Lucky Can You Get!"
6.2| 2h16m| PG| en| More Info
Released: 15 March 1975 Released
Producted By: Columbia Pictures
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Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Famous singer Fanny Brice has divorced her first husband Nicky Arnstein. During the Great Depression she has trouble finding work as an artist, but meets Billy Rose, a newcomer who writes lyrics and owns a nightclub.

Genre

Drama, Comedy, Romance

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Director

Herbert Ross

Production Companies

Columbia Pictures

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Funny Lady Audience Reviews

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.
Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one
Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.
Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
TheLittleSongbird While not without flaws Funny Girl was a wonderful film with Barbra Streisand boasting one of the finest film debuts ever. Funny Lady is nowhere near as good, but that doesn't mean it's bad because it's not. It has lovely costumes and sets, if not as opulent as those of Funny Girl, and the photography is mostly very nice, especially the use of Panavision in I Found a Million Dollar Baby in a Five and Ten Cent Store. Save a couple of exceptions, particularly in It's Gonna Be a Happy Day, the overuse of long shots gives it a rather chaotic look. The music is not as great as Funny Girl's, with the score being pleasant and paced well, and while none of the songs quite equal Don't Rain On My Parade or My Man they are fine on their equal, with the best being How Lucky Can You Get?, More Than You Know and I Found a Million Dollar Baby in a Five and Ten Cent Store. The script is amusing with a few sweet moments. Barbra is not as magical as she was in Funny Girl with Fanny having more of diva-ish attitude, but she manages the comic and dramatic(certainly better than in A Star is Born) moments very well and her singing is as gorgeous and impassioned as ever. James Caan is also good though with a character who's not easy to like at first, and they have an easy chemistry together. Omar Sharif is as charming as he was in Funny Girl, Roddy McDowell is underused but memorable and Ben Vereen has the chance to show some fancy footwork. Funny Lady is problematic, long shots overuse aside. The pacing does have a tendency to be elephantine, especially like in Funny Girl in the second half and the story is not as fun, as romantic or as touching as Funny Girl(they're evident just that Funny Girl had them much stronger) so it was not as easy to properly invest or engage with it. And if you thought the story and writing in Funny Girl was clichéd or contrived, and a fair few people do think that, Funny Lady does it worse. Herbert Ross's direction is rather clumsy as well, the direction in It's Gonna Be a Happy Day is particularly muddled and he does lose control of the story and its clichés at frequent points. Overall, a lacklustre sequel but a watchable one at least. 6/10 Bethany Cox
mark.waltz Six years after receiving her Oscar for the role of Fanny Brice in "Funny Lady", Barbra Streisand was back for round two of the great comic's life. "What's next, Funny Grandma?", she allegedly quipped, and if that never came to fruition, the second installment is still a worthy follow-up. Not as well written or original as its predecessor, "Funny Lady" still takes us back to the middle of Brice's career, although Ziegfeld, Mama Brice and her Jewish cronies and Brice's daughter (wife of producer Ray Stark) are curiously absent.Now divorced from Nicky Arnstein, Brice sets out on her own from Ziegfeld to work with the somewhat obnoxious newcomer Billy Rose (James Caan) who at first doesn't seem to understand show business or how to really put on a show. That would change over the years, and he is now a legendary name in Broadway circles. There's a hysterical glimpse of the over-stuffed circus like atmosphere he would outdo Ziegeld with (think "Billy Rose's Jumbo" or "Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe"), and when Fanny breaks out into "I Met a Million Dollar Baby", everything that can go wrong does go wrong. Streisand briefly allows Broadway baby Ben Vereen to get into the act too, but it's mostly Streisand singing, although she does generously allow Caan to duet with her on "It's Only a Paper Moon".The comic skits are more realistic for Brice's status than the big glamor numbers. "I've Got a Blind Date" and "Code in My Doze" are two highlights, but "Great Day", as well as it is staged, doesn't appear to be right for Brice, more in-tuned for the (by 1975 standards) public image that was la Streisand. However, when she breaks into two big songs for Brice off-stage ("Let's Here It For Me!" and the Oscar Nominated "How Lucky Can You Get?"), it's all back. Having been on a tug boat in "Funny Girl" and a train in "Hello, Dolly!", Streisand covers practically every other moving vehicle (airplane and sports car) in the ego-sounding "Let's Here It For Me", an over-the-top but fun love letter to herself that truly pleased her ardent fans.Veteran director William Wyler had brought simplicity to "Funny Girl" with its high budget, but with Herbert Ross in the director's chair here, it is all lavish and sometimes garish. Still, there's no denying this woman's talent, and even if others suffer with lack of screen time or musical numbers, it's worth it just to hear that voice.
writers_reign The minute Funny Girl went into the black a sequel was on the cards and like most sequels it had a mountain to climb and barely made it to base camp. It's difficult to blame producer Ray Stark for wanting to squeeze extra mileage out of his mother-in-law Fanny Brice and although Brice was either unknown or had been forgotten when Funny Girl opened on Broadway both the show and the subsequent film brought her to the attention of a new audience so on paper why not a sequel. Thanks to the dubious association of the words Billy Rose and lyricist - the smart money says he 'bought' the lyrics with which he is credited from more talented writers - the film is laced with quality numbers on the order of More Than You Know, It's Only A Paper Moon, Me And My Shadow, etc and Streisand can certainly put a song across but somehow this fails to jell and weighs in at a good twenty minutes too long. Worth seeing .... once.
joseph952001 I'ts just a shame that Barbra Striesand didn't wait a little bit longer to make her screen debut in Funny Girl because this sequel Funny Lady is an example of what she could have really done with Funny Girl if she had waited. Funny Girl is O.K. but it's not the film it could have been. In Funny Girl, she just didn't have the right director. Don't get me wrong; William Wyler, best known as Willie Wyler, is an excellent director, but Michael Curtiz would have been better for Striesands debut as Fanny Brice and if you question my judgment on this, remember that it was Michael Curtiz that directed Doris Day's first movie Romance On The High Sea which made her a star overnight and he directed James Cagney in his Oscar Winning Performance Yankee Doodle Dandy in which Cagney played song and dance man George M. Cohan! Now, the songs such as More Than You Know, Am I Blue, and Million Dollar Baby gives the film a feel for that period of time that the songs in Funny Girl didn't even though they incorporated Second Hand Rose and at the end of the film ending up with Fanny Brices signature song My Man which were not in the original stage production. So, what makes Funny Lady a much finer movie for Streisand, even though she dreaded making this sequel. Well, for one thing, the interweaving of new and old songs. Striesands over-all appearance and her singing is superb and the surprise of the show with James Cann and his handling of the singing since he's not a singer. There has only been one other dramatic actor who has been able to sing, as well as dance in a musical; that being Marlon Brando playing Sky Masterson in the film version of Guys and Dolls. Funny Lady is far superior to the film Funny Girl, and I guess the reason for this is that Striesand looks more comfortable as a film actress and doesn't look overwhelm as to what she should be doing in from of the camera! Great show Babs!