- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
63The animation itself is just OK. And the reworked script, despite some funny one-liners, is pretty much there just to pull the story along to its inevitable conclusion. [19 March 1999, Friday, p. A]
-
63It's doubtful that today's children would have any patience for the stagy 1956 version, so the current animated offering, despite its flaws, at least opens a door to the music.
-
50Seemed kind of stuffy.
-
50Animated version of the Rogers & Hammerstein musical.
-
50Still, it's almost impossible to entirely wreck this great chestnut of Broadway and film. Thanks mostly to the terrific songs, the new version has transporting moments. [20 March 1999, Daily Notebook, p.B1]
-
50No abomination but forgettably mediocre. [19 March 1999, Life, p. 13E]
-
50It's hard to be diverted by a tale whose emblematic romances and terminal cuteness serve an agenda that seems particularly dated today.
-
40Shabby, nondescript hack job.
-
40The tale has been tidied, buffed, waxed and polished into a harmless but relatively boring adventure.
-
For adults, the film does, at least, offer up most of the lovely, schmaltzy Rodgers and Hammerstein score. Even here, though, the pleasure comes with a wearying price tag.
-
The animation is done in rich, jewel-like colors, but it seems strangely flat. The overall film does, too, although the glorious Rodgers and Hammerstein music makes up for a lot.
-
38Unappealing for children and adults alike, The King and I will likely bring families together in their mutual boredom.
-
30A dismal pastiche of threadbare plot devices and not-so-comic interludes.
-
30Broadway musical purists will shudder in horror, but parents will be whistling a happy tune that there's at least one acceptable pic out there for their kids.
-
Lacks genuine magic.
-
20Garish, animated junk.
-
20It's hard to imagine a more ill-advised choice of source material.
-
20Even the Richard Rich-directed animation -- except for some nice but gratuitous computer-generated walking statues and dramatic ocean waves -- is not appreciably better than Saturday morning cartoons.
-
0It's a puzzlement how so many pros could have so wrecked one of the most beloved, hummably familiar movie musicals in the Rodgers and Hammerstein repertoire.
-
0An animated King and I? Now there's torture, especially in this wretched, lurid, absurd concoction which seems to have been conceived to annoy adults and bore children.