My Fair Lady (1964)
Directed by George Cukor
A snobbish phonetics professor agrees to a wager that he can take a flower girl and make her presentable in high society.
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What critics compared My Fair Lady to
A similar theme in My Fair Lady was also acceptable to me.
This is, of course, the same kind of Pygmalion story which launched Andrews herself to fame as Eliza Doolittle in the Broadway production of My Fair Lady all those years ago.
It's also a treat to have Andrews -- the actress who rose to fame playing such protegees as Eliza Doolittle in "My Fair Lady" and "Cinderella" in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical of the same name -- back on the screen again, brightening up every one of her scenes just by being there.
Those of us who've fretted for years over Julie Andrews being dumped for Audrey Hepburn for the screen version of "My Fair Lady" can finally calm down — sort of.
So the story is a kind of "My Fair Lady," with Andrews taking on the Henry Higgins role of giving the girl a spectacular makeover, teaching her manners, filling her with noblesse oblige and overcoming her heel-dragging reluctance.
Adapted from Meg Cabot's novel by Gina Wendkos ("Coyote Ugly"), "The Princess Diaries" blends bits of "My Fair Lady," "Anastasia," and "Pocketful of Miracles" for its tale of a commoner whose royal grandmother grooms her for a global stage.
Director Matthew Vaughn mixes a wallop of James Bond with a bit of Austin Powers, stirs in a little “Hunger Games,” adds a flavor of “My Fair Lady,” and finishes it off with a dash of “28 Days Later.”
Cross-genre pollination has brought us My Fair Lady meets James Bond, Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer.
With nods to John Steed (the umbrella) and Harry Palmer (the glasses), this finds Taron Egerton’s “Eggsy” recruited by an elite super-spy unit of gentlemanly spooks who attempt to transform him from effing estate kid to Old Etonian killer in My Fair Lady fashion.
Adapted by Vaughn and Jane Goldman from the Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons comic as a kind of self-aware riff on Pygmalion or, really, My Fair Lady, the writers keep things moving.
It's the story of a streetwise London youth named Eggsy (Taron Egerton) who is rescued from his life of petty crime and run-ins with the law by a posh secret agent named Harry Hart (Colin Firth) and trained to be a new generation of spy (as the film cheekily points out, it's basically "Pretty Woman" or "My Fair Lady," but with way more guns), working for a top secret, privatized spying operation.
"She's All That" is basically yet another tale of how clothes make the girl, another brick in the "My Fair Lady"/"Guys and Dolls"/"Pretty in Pink" wall.
A modern take on Pygmalion and My Fair Lady, She’s All That really offers nothing new.
There have been numerous versions of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion story produced on big and small screens, the most popular of which is probably 1964's My Fair Lady.
Of course it is an unbreakable rule of this formula that the ugly duckling is a swan in disguise: Rachael Leigh Cook is in fact quite beautiful, as was Audrey Hepburn , you will recall, in "My Fair Lady."
You would never guess it from the trailer, but "Miss Congeniality" was probably inspired by either the musical "My Fair Lady" or its inspiration, George Bernard Shaw's stage play "Pygmalion."
"Miss Congeniality" has a hard time getting past its by-the-numbers, routine plot that pulls in the usual chestnuts of undercover cop tale, "My Fair Lady," fish-out-of-water story and, for good measure, a romance.
Little surprise, really, that Miss Congeniality was not only better as My Fair Lady , but also better as a straight farce a year earlier with Drop Dead Gorgeous .
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Thus here is a bigger and sillier movie, albeit one not nearly as clean and well-structured as 2015’s My Fair Lady by way of axe-wielding superspies.
It was a spy version of My Fair Lady, and it worked, because in it’s world building of an original action series, it was also a tongue in cheek parody of the James Bond franchise, to the degree of creating brand excitement for young people in it’s audience to consider the purchase of sharp, tailored suite carried by the Mr. Porter brand in the same way Bond timelessly sports a Timex watch and drives an Aston Martin.
2014’s Kingsman: The Secret Service has a fairly succinct premise: an ultra-violent, laddish James Bond crossed with My Fair Lady, from Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn.
While not shy on carnage, the earlier “Kingsman” focused on Eggsy’s transformation from a streetwise hood into a dapper young super-spy — basically, the movie was “My Fair Lady” meets James Bond, as Eggsy learned to dress smart, talk properly and save the world, taking his shirt off just often enough to remind what the movie was really selling.
If the first film drew its magic from a “My Fair Lady”-like attempt by Firth to prove breeding doesn’t determine gallantness, the sequel lacks a central idea.
At the end of the first film, he’d gone through his My Fair Lady-riffing transformation to become a fully-fledged member of the titular secret service operation; this one drops us, Bond-style, into the midst of a big set piece involving a former rival and a ludicrously violent and over-the-top punch-up in the back of a speeding cab.
(Roberts in the red gown is meant to remind us of the transformed Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady.)
Written by newcomer J.F. Lawton, the comedy is a mosaic of "Moonstruck," "Splash," "The Fabulous Baker Boys," "Working Girl," "My Fair Lady" and "An Officer and a Gentleman," among others.
Elizondo plays the My Fair Lady game as solid as I’ve ever seen, and Alexander plays the soulless short asshole as only he can.
In something of a “My Fair Lady” theme, Alma eventually comes to live at Reynold’s house, starts to learn the craft of dressmaking, and becomes his latest muse for fashion.
But this is not “Funny Face” or “My Fair Lady” or “Pretty Woman” or any number of “ugly” duckling turns to swan with the help of a hairbrush/expensive clothes/great man stories.
At times he recalls Professor Higgins in Shaw’s “Pygmalion” and in its musical version, “My Fair Lady,” as well as other protagonists from the British theater and cinema – characters who manage their lives with unswerving rigor and impose their egocentric authority on those around them from the heights of the upper class.
Personally, I don't think it equals "My Fair Lady," "Oklahoma," "Singin' in the Rain," "The Music Man," "The Sound of Music," or "Cabaret," but it's right up there with the best of them.
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Wisely eschewing a cinematic reimagining (a la My Fair Lady), Miranda and director Thomas Kail also avoid a minimalist presentation that would do little more than ape the full theatrical experience.
Theater fans who mourn that so many Broadway shows are retreads of the oldies; “South Pacific,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “West Side Story,” “My Fair Lady,” “The Music Man,” will cheer that “Hamilton” is thoroughly original.
The action is located in a London more reminiscent of My Fair Lady than, say, Top Boy or A Clockwork Orange , and a soundtrack bristling with classic pop songs – The Zombies’ “Time of the Season”, “These Boots Were Made for Walking”, the Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow” and “Sympathy for the Devil” – lends an aura of Swinging London and Carnaby Street.