south pacific: 2.5hrs (minus ~3 mins) i won't get back

[2woodroses]

yes they really did make it that color for a significant portion of the movie.

RIGHT. the overture began, i thought ahhh, i love those schmaltzy vintage strings...and then the movie began and not ten seconds later i thought oh boy. this is going to be one of those racist racist old movies. it's a very conventional musical, hamstrung by its inability to go more than two minutes without either objectifying asian people, polynesian people, somehow they sneak in some racism against black people too...the male lead, french guy, is not that interesting and tbh i don't know why the female lead, the nurse, is into him, and i kept getting blindsided by the fact that i actually knew some of the songs.

to wit, my father has been delightedly singing 'SALMON-CHANTED EVENING' whenever salmon (the fish) is mentioned for my entire life. i discovered that the lyrics were, in fact, 'some enchanted evening.' the more you know!

liat, the side character's love interest, says like two words in the entire movie and the rest of her screen time is 75% trying to be sexy while looking like she's about to cry and the rest is running around flailing. they did not resolve her story like at all. then there's her man, lieutenant cable, who sings a song about how racism is bad (??), and the message of the song is like. fine i guess. but the language is hm. outdated.

now let's address the color grading. oh my god the yellow is like the midst of an apocalyptic wildfire and the blue is like. i don't know. mostly bad. theres one shot where it's more purple that actually works. and the rest of the movie it doesn't. also the vignette effect is incredibly heavy for way too much of it.

overall. im not a fan. 3/10, for the only good 3 minutes of the movie (the overture).