The Sound of Music is, of course, the film version of the musical by Rodgers & Hammerstein and starring Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer (singing by Bill Lee), Eleanor Parker, Richard Haydn, Peggy Wood, Charmian Carr, Heather Menzies, Nicholas Hammond, Duane Chase, Angela Cartwright, Debbie Turner, Kym Karath, and Daniel Truhitte.
In Austria, just as Nazi Germany is ramping up, Maria (Andrews) is a novice about to become a nun, except the other nuns are concerned because she's, like, got a personality. She's got far too much lust for life to be a nun (and here's how you can tell this is fiction), so instead of beating it out of her they send to be the governess of the seven children of Captain Von Trapp (Plummer), a naval veteran who lost his wife some years back.
Von Trapp runs his house like a naval academy, refusing to let his children play or, like, be kids, and so they've taken to terrorizing and running off any governess they get because it briefly gets his attention. Maria rolls in with the radical notion of being kind to the kids, letting them play instead of march, and (most important) teaching them to sing, and Von Trapp comes around. However, he's also about to marry the Baroness Elsa von Schraeder (Parker), who isn't crazy about having all these kids around (she's not, like, evil about it, she's just not interested in being a mom and plans to ship them off to boarding school). But it becomes clear that Von Trapp really loves Maria, and Eleanor graciously bows out, Von Trapp and Maria marry, and get back from honeymoon just in time to flee over the mountains because the Nazis intend to press Von Trapp back into service.
Now, that is a two-paragraph summation of a 3-hour movie, but when you take the songs out it goes faster. I'd never actually seen The Sound of Music - unusual for a theater kid, I know, but it was just out of rotation when I was in high school, I guess. Now that I have seen it, it's very much a Rodgers & Hammerstein show. The music is catchy but verses get repeated and there's a lot of refrains, the dialog is snappy but largely harmless, there are double entrendres but nothing that would make anyone grasp their pearls.
I will say that it's hard with this many characters to give all of them a distinct voice, especially with the seven Von Trapp children. Liesel (Carr), the oldest, manages because she gets her own duet with the lost postboy Rolfe (Truhitte), who does a heel-turn later and goes full Nazi. Greta (Karath), the youngest, is easily identifiable because she's a wee one, but the other ones, the two boys (Hammond and Chase) especially, just kind of blend together.
Christopher Plummer brings some edge to the show as Von Trapp, and comes across perfectly as a man who's still in flux, moving from mourning to rediscovering his family to having to flee his home. Plummer evidently hated this movie and was kind of a prick about it at the time, which I'm sure helped the performance at least somewhat.
In any case, it's an older musical, and it's a fun time if you like older musicals. It's a little cloying at times, but that's kind of part of the charm. I do remember thinking that the show could have ended when Von Trapp and Maria marry if not for those damn Nazis.
My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: Low
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