Poor BYE BYE BIRDIE! It can't get any respect.
A terrific unexpected hit on Broadway in 1960 (608p. April 14 - Oct. 7, 1961, at the Martin Beck, 54th Street & Shubert Theatres and reproduced by virtually every high school drama department in the country!), it was travestied as a 1963 film that threw out half the plot and tossed in a TOTALLY inappropriately old and slutty (except for libidinous teenagers and dirty old men) Ann Margaret as a supposed "teenager." At least IT had the good sense to retain most of the best of the Broadway Cast (except for the luminous Chita Rivera as "Rosie").
Now in 1995, falsely advertising itself as a "faithful" filming of the show, we are given for our sins a "cast by 'Q Ratings'" travesty (the supposedly innocent ...BIRDIE is set before "Loving vs. Virginia" and an interracial couple, Albert & Rosie, in Sweetwater, Ohio would have been more controversial than Conrad Birdie's supposedly worldly "bad influence") with three exceedingly dull songs replacing better ones and Michael Stewart's finely tuned book diluted by someone who seems to have thought the Rock Hudson/Doris Day movies were too challenging.
There are bright spots rising above the amateur re-writing and direction (can this possibly be the same Gene Sacks who gave us the original MAME on stage? Hollywood certainly didn't agree with him!): Marc Kudisch is a legitimately wonderful "Birdie," and the always superbly grounded Tyne Daly almost pulls off an appropriately cartoonish Mae (Albert's mother). Everyone else however is cast with as little concern for the characters they are playing as Ann Margaret was in the first movie version, but without the lecherous overlay, and consequently sink to new professional lows. Jason Alexander is a decent comic actor - always the "go-to guy" if you couldn't afford Nathan Lane (rather like Sally Ann Howes was to Julie Andrews), but if you remember Albert as a charismatic, lanky dancer like Dick Van Dyke, give this sad remake a very wide berth.
A terrific unexpected hit on Broadway in 1960 (608p. April 14 - Oct. 7, 1961, at the Martin Beck, 54th Street & Shubert Theatres and reproduced by virtually every high school drama department in the country!), it was travestied as a 1963 film that threw out half the plot and tossed in a TOTALLY inappropriately old and slutty (except for libidinous teenagers and dirty old men) Ann Margaret as a supposed "teenager." At least IT had the good sense to retain most of the best of the Broadway Cast (except for the luminous Chita Rivera as "Rosie").
Now in 1995, falsely advertising itself as a "faithful" filming of the show, we are given for our sins a "cast by 'Q Ratings'" travesty (the supposedly innocent ...BIRDIE is set before "Loving vs. Virginia" and an interracial couple, Albert & Rosie, in Sweetwater, Ohio would have been more controversial than Conrad Birdie's supposedly worldly "bad influence") with three exceedingly dull songs replacing better ones and Michael Stewart's finely tuned book diluted by someone who seems to have thought the Rock Hudson/Doris Day movies were too challenging.
There are bright spots rising above the amateur re-writing and direction (can this possibly be the same Gene Sacks who gave us the original MAME on stage? Hollywood certainly didn't agree with him!): Marc Kudisch is a legitimately wonderful "Birdie," and the always superbly grounded Tyne Daly almost pulls off an appropriately cartoonish Mae (Albert's mother). Everyone else however is cast with as little concern for the characters they are playing as Ann Margaret was in the first movie version, but without the lecherous overlay, and consequently sink to new professional lows. Jason Alexander is a decent comic actor - always the "go-to guy" if you couldn't afford Nathan Lane (rather like Sally Ann Howes was to Julie Andrews), but if you remember Albert as a charismatic, lanky dancer like Dick Van Dyke, give this sad remake a very wide berth.