Finian’s Rainbow (1966)

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Starring Fred Astaire, Petula Clark, Don Francks, Tommy Steele, Keenan Wynne, Barbara Hancock, Ronald Colby, Al Freeman Jr., Wright King, Dolph Sweet, Louil Silas. [G]

Gold at the end of the rainbow, desperate land grabs, and a love quadrangle among an Irish lass (Clark), a well-meaning schemer (Francks), a mute girl (Hancock) who expresses herself through dance, and a leprechaun (Steele) all clash in this adaptation of the popular stage musical. Coppola’s first big studio production (a marked change of pace for one of “those UCLA kids”) lacks a personal touch, but he corrals the big set pieces well enough and gets from Astaire—in his final singing and dancing role—a performance that echoes of his heyday from thirty-plus years ago. The songs aren’t especially memorable or catchy (though the lyrics are usually at least more literate and droll than average), and like most musicals of the 1960s, it runs at least a half-hour too long. The supposedly satirical “racial shenanigans” are painful, particularly Wynne in blackface. Can at least boast one great line about the US Constitution that is as applicable to politics now as ever before: “I don’t have time to read it…I’m too busy defending it!”

60/100