What do they mean, "Hello Dolly"? Has this lady been out of town or something? The Dolly Levi character is so embarrassingly ill-defined that I thought there had to be a missing reel somewhere in vaults of 20th Century Fox. She appears fully-formed without the slightest hint of any character arc, and the plot has her pop in and out of the action only when a song is required to break up all the boredom. She's also charmless, meddling, and unfunny. I found the incessant chit-chat between the supporting players mostly pointless, and the musical score lacks a single hummable tune - with the possible exception of the title number, which never grabbed me in the first place and which I've now heard 80,724 times (give or take) over the last 50+ years. I know that the musical theatre genre requires us to accept some thinly drawn characters and the usual cornball romantic plotlines, but Hello Dolly! Stretches our patience to the max. Why on this earth would a snobby, hyper-expensive New York restaurant that caters to the barons of the Gilded Age make such a fuss over an irritating blabbermouth like Dolly and then top it all off with an endless song and dance number in some sort of fawning tribute? Why does professional matchmaker Dolly set her sights for her own marriage upon a jowly, wholly loathsome feed-and-tack merchant from Yonkers? Not only is there zero chemistry between these two (the age difference alone is downright embarrassing), but this odd couple seem to become increasingly wrong for each other as the silly plot grinds on. Why Tommy Tune, or the dancing waiters, or the hat shop girl subplot, or the bloated street parade with zillions of extras? And why Walter Matthau at all? Agonizing from start to finish.
Review of Hello, Dolly!
