Friday Movie Review: Victor/Victoria Starring Julie Andrews

I have to tell you, The Sound of Music is number one or two (depends on the week I’ve had) on the list of my all time favorite movies. I quite literally can’t carry a tune in a bucket but I know every song in the movie word for word and I sing them loud and proud. Nobody was more excited than me when “Sound” was released in a 45th Anniversary Edition last year. Yes, I tortured my son through it. Thankfully, my wife is down with any movie that has kids singing or dancing. Much to my total shock, she had never seen “Sound”. Can you imagine that?! I remedied that situation right away!

Julie Andrews has had an amazing stage and screen career. Her early performances focused on her wonderful, 4 octave voice. She has two all time, classic musical films to her credit. Besides “Sound” there’s also the Disney Classic Mary Poppins. Lesser known, in other words, not of classic film status but still very popular with both movie and later stage audiences, were her dual roles as both Victor and Victoria in the 1982 movie, ahem, Victor/Victoria.

The Amazon.com editorial review of this movie by Jim Emerson describes the plot better than I could, so here it is:

Blake Edwards’s delightful Victor/Victoria may be one of the last of the great, old-style movie musical comedies–it is so good, it was turned into a hit Broadway stage musical years later. And both versions starred Edwards’s wife Julie Andrews (the former Mary Poppins) in the title role–as Victor and Victoria. She’s a down-and-out singer who hooks up with a flamboyantly gay theatrical veteran (Robert Preston), and together they become the toast of 1934 Paris by dreaming up a provocative nightclub act in which Victoria assumes the identity of a man in drag. So, in other words, Andrews plays a woman playing a man playing a woman … and that’s only the beginning of the sexual identity confusions that provide the fuel for this splendidly classy slapstick musical farce. (Yes, it’s all those things.) James Garner, as a Chicago club owner, finds himself strangely besotted with this stylish, androgynous creature–even though he thinks Victor/Victoria is a man. Legendary Hollywood composer Henry Mancini (a longtime collaborator with Edwards) won his last Oscar for the score; Andrews, Preston, and Lesley Ann Warren, as Garner’s cheeky girlfriend, were also nominated. Musical highlights include Victor/Victoria’s sizzling “Le Jazz Hot” (in which Andrews shows off her incredible vocal range); another showstopper for Victor/Victoria, “The Shady Dame from Seville”; Preston’s witty ode to “Gay Paree”; Warren’s hilarious burlesque number, “King’s Can-Can”; and a charmingly casual yet elegant side-by-side number, “You and Me,” done in a small club by Preston and Andrews in tuxedos. –Jim Emerson

Andrews would later go on to reprise her dual roles in the movie on the stage. The stage adaptation proved so popular, the cast went on a world tour. She had to stop touring with the show in 1997 due to botched surgery on her throat that left her unable to sing for several years.

Anyway, back to the movie. This is a complete reversal away from the “goody two shoes” type of role, as you can tell from the plot synopsis, for the woman who played both nanny Mary Poppins, and Catholic nun turned governess Maria in The Sound of Music. She’s outstanding in this film as well. I would have loved to have seen the live stage production! On a side note, she has returned to singing in limited engagements.

The other stars in Victor/Victoria shine too. Hats off especially to Robert Preston (The Music Man) in the role of the gay emcee who discovers Victoria and makes her the toast of Paris.

Oh, and, be prepared to laugh long and hard too. Music and comedy- what more could you ask for, for your Friday night viewing pleasure?