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Carol Channing: Larger Than Life
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  1. snailmovies
    Jan 23, 2012
    8
    Though gushing with an unwanted of recommendations typical to most showbiz bio-docs, Mary Channing: Bigger Than Life goes well when the 90-year-old trouper, now a fizzy pet from the far away fantastic periods of National musical technology humor, reminisces, shills, and dances (gingerly) for charitable organisation. Having outlasted the era of the star-centric Broadway present, she revolves doubtlessly well-honed stories about her star-struck girlhood in San Francisco, greens periods in hotel reveals and revues, and developing her "dumb as a fox" personality through trademark jobs in Males Desire Blondes and Hello, Dolly! Channing, even when obliging autograph hunters, as well tasks the element of always-on entertainer and guileless girlfriend that only a few precious symbols have coordinated up. (Dolly Parton comes to thoughts, as does, in a TV video where Channing banters ditzily with Henry Uses up, Burns's lover Gracie Allen.) Relaxing for manager Dori Berinstein's digicam with 4th man Harry Kullijian, whose gathering with his junior-high break after 70 decades apart is the normal heart-tugger of this doc, Mary controls a fantastic matinee-ready take when Harry shrugs, "I considered she was deceased." Alas, Bigger Than Daily normal life is too little to contain Channing's legacy; aside from an starting montage which goes chronologically backwards through six generations of the celebrity performing "Diamonds Are a Ladies Best Companion," Berinstein's blemishes and elisions are continually doubtful. Associates and collaborators like Marge Champ and the overdue Nancy Garrett are entitled to their talking-head time, but coming to a roundtable of growing older refrain young children three periods to perform Channing's praises? Crediting the inclusion of "Before the Celebration Moves By" by musician Jerry Herman with maintaining Hello, Dolly!, but never allowing more than three collections of it play? This profile's replicate step of really like for its topic simply actually leaves it to Mary to take responsibility for showing priority for the theatre over her son ("That's wrong…It's a self-centered life") and discount her "lousy 42-year marriage" in one line—though of course, given this milieu, seeing Darlene Reynolds rush into holes over her buddy's "patience" in getting married to her lover at 82 is pay dust. Gamely prancing her pipe-cleaner divisions with Broadway gypsies or increasing her raspy chirp on part of disciplines knowledge in community colleges, Channing continues to be sui generis in post-World War II popular lifestyle, but this doc foolishly protects its video with dullards like Barbara Walters and impressionist Vibrant Little instead of maintaining the big-eyed, satchel-mouthed pixie at its middle.… Expand
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Critic Reviews

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Metascore
67 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 13 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 13
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 13
  3. Negative: 1 out of 13
  1. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Lou Lumenick
    Feb 3, 2012
    38
    There's little sense of the Carol Channing beneath the overdone makeup - if there is one.
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  2. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    Feb 2, 2012
    90
    A preternatural self-confidence and buoyancy infuse every syllable out of Ms. Channing's mouth in this entertaining film.
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  3. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Leba Hertz
    Feb 2, 2012
    100
    Don't expect an in-depth study or exposé in Carol Channing: Larger Than Life. But director Dori Berinstein does capture the essence of Carol as one of those creatures of the theater that when you see her onstage, you know you've seen something special.
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