Dotsthavesp I wanted to but couldn't!

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Aiden Melton The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Martin Bradley A camp classic but also so much more. The critics came down like a ton of bricks on Ken Russell's musical comedy which was, on the one hand, a screen version of Sandy Wilson's show and, on the other, a comment on the 'putting-on-a-show' kind of musical popular in the early thirties. Russell's idea of opening up most of the numbers, as in a big Busby Berkeley production, worked brilliantly but didn't please either the critics or the public; still it made a movie star (of sorts) out of the model Twiggy who is charm personified while the former ballet dancer Christopher Gable is a delightful leading man. It's also got a great supporting cast of some of the best British character players of the time, including an unbilled Glenda Jackson - Go out there and be so great you'll make me hate you - and whatever happened to Antonia Ellis and Georgina Hale, both brilliant here, as well as Broadway's Tommy Tune whose dancing comes close to stopping the show. Unfortunately it wasn't really a commercial success and is seldom seen now but if, like me, you have any interest in the musical, catch it; it's absolutely fabulous!

nickrogers1969 Oh, how I love this film! It is my favourite musical. I adore how it takes place in a run down, almost empty theatre with unknown actors who are all hungry to be discovered. They aren't above deceiving their colleagues in order to shine a little extra in front of the film director sitting in the audience! I adore the cast of British actors who really bring these second rate theatre actors to life! It's still charming to watch after all these years. My favourite character is Maisie played by Antonia Ellis.I first saw it on German television in the long version and recorded it on video. Lucky I did because the film was unavailable for so many years and when I did find a copy it was a much shorter version without many of my favourite scenes. The ones with the "Nicer in Nice" and "I got the you don't want to play with me blues" were missing. The musical numbers in the forest and when they are leprechauns were much shorter. Thank goodness that Warner Brothers have finally released the whole film in a complete remastered edition with all the scenes restored in a 136 minute version!! The picture quality is pristine. The DVD really could have benefited though from a commentary track with Ken Russell and Twiggy. I'm dying to hear how the film was conceived! It is such an imaginative and inventive film.It is a joy to watch. I am aware that some people can't bear to watch it or understand it. I enjoy every "overlong" minute of it! The dancing is amazing. Twiggy is so sweet and perfect for the part of Polly. She is a good dancer and has a nice pleasing voice. I wonder why she didn't make more films after the Boy Friend. I wish it had been more of a hit. A year later another backstage movie was released showing the shoddiness and decadence of theatre life. Cabaret is well known but the Boy Firend is a film no one has ever heard of…Please take the time to discover this light hearted gem!

st-shot Ken Russell took a break from his cinema of shock and gore to make this fun for the whole family saccharine sweet romantic nostalgia piece The Boyfriend. Sentimental with syrup running through its veins Boyfriend is also campy send up by the restrained Russell who surrounds his naive innocent lead Polly (Twiggy) with a cast of looking out for number one ambitious but mediocre troupers stepping all over each other to impress the rodent like Hollywood producer Cecil DeThrill sitting in a box in a balcony.When the lead (Glenda Jackson) goes down with a leg injury understudy Polly nervously steps into the role filled with anxiety. Distracting as well is her leading man who she's fallen madly for offstage. He does not reciprocate however and her melancholy takes on real meaning as she performs. Meanwhile amid a scant audience the rest of the players wildly undermine each other.One of the better film musicals of the era The Boyfriend avoids the big well oiled production in favor of the sparsely attended, sometimes clumsily choreographed stage hall feel where mostly minimally talented performers with healthy egos make comically vain (in both senses of the word) attempts to punch their ticket to Hollywood. Visually the film is spry and bright in costume and design with a couple of Berkely numbers thrown in for extra pizazz captured with the usual cinematic élan of cameraman David Watkin.The cast plays it broad with model Twiggy's wide eyed innocence as sweet and endearing as Glenda Farrell in Sunnyside forty years earlier. Max Adrian comically leads an army of hams still believing in themselves including Katherine Widmer, Bryan Fraser, Moya Fraser and Jackson sitting out front doing a slow burn over Polly's performance. The Boyfriend does have its slow moments and the imaginative Russell doesn't pull off all his conceits with the director's cut that runs in excess of two hours but overall it remains a unique musical to this day avoiding formula that subsequent big musicals dared not leave the comfort of. It gets better with age.

fung0 The Boyfriend is not just the last great movie musical, but one of the greatest of all movie musicals. And a truly Great film, regardless of genre.Taking a tuneful but forgettable neo-1930s stage musical as a starting point, Russell created a multi-layered, kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria of a film. It's a movie about movies, about the theater, about creativity and imagination. It's about human nature. It's a love story (of course!). It's trivial, it's deep, it's shocking. It's gloriously excessive, in the best Russell manner. But this is excess with a purpose. Every image, ever musical set-piece works in multiple ways. I've seen it probably a dozen times, and I've never seen the same film twice.This is definitely a film that needs to be seen in wide-screen. (Until we get a proper Blu-ray, Turner Classic Movies shows a somewhat blurry but complete British print.) Russell out-does Busby Berkeley, with split-screen sequences no other director would dare to attempt. But by making the film as a play-within-a-play, he cleverly adds human drama missing from the original lightweight theatrical script. And creates a deliciously ironic counterpoint between the emotions of the actors and those of the stereotyped characters they portray.Remarkably, the performances hold up to all this. Twiggy is barely remembered as a 1960s footnote, but here she proves she was not just a remarkably pretty face. (Her fresh and innocent performance sparkles in a way that the polished and rather precious Julie Andrews recording does not.) Tommy Tune does credit to the long-legged Buddy Ebsen specialty numbers. And Russell's perennial favorite Vladek Sheybal is perfect as CB DeThrille, the mildly Mephistophelian embodiment of Russell himself.Ken Russell was always impressive for his technique, but in The Boyfriend he brought all his abilities to focus in a celebration of film entertainment. It's easily the best movie musical since the days of Singing in the Rain and The Bandwagon, and though it lacks the star power of a Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly, it adds a depth and vision that no other musical approaches.They just don't make 'em like this any more. In fact, aside from Ken Russell, no one ever did.