Too much of everything

To me, this movie is perfection.

Memorable, crazy movie

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The Mikado is one of Gilbert and Sullivan's best works, and I was most interested in seeing this version after trying to view as many G&S productions as possible. I personally prefer the Lesley Garrett/Eric Idle 1987 version, but while flawed this Mikado is still interesting. Much has been said about the cuts, and I have to agree. I can understand why there were some, but some either didn't make sense to be cut or are just too good, KoKo's Little List number was especially true to this. I also thought the spoken prologue was rather pointless and characters have a tendency in important scenes in drift in and out of range.However, visually and technically it is splendid, the Technicolour looks gorgeous and the costumes and sets are wonderfully authentic. The music is among G&S's best, and while you do wish it was complete it is beautifully performed and conducted. The comedy is sparkling and witty also, and the story is still charming enough. The performances are generally great, Kenny Baker is not quite as impressive as Nanki-Poo, vocally the singing is bright and clear and he looks the part but his acting is rather bland. On the other hand, Jean Collins sings Yum-Yum beautifully and Constance Willis is wonderfully arrogant and poignant as Katisha. John Barclay is an imposing Mikado, Gregory Stroud is good in the insubstantial role of Pish-Tush and Sydney Granville is delightfully pompous as Pooh-Bah. But the best performance easily comes from the splendid KoKo of Martyn Green, one of the best ever in this role, that's for sure.All in all, interesting and generally well-made and sung, but at the same time perhaps not the most ideal of versions. 7.5/10 Bethany Cox

I came to this movie expecting a full-scale professional performance, encouraged by the presence of authentic Savoyard Martyn Green in the cast (he plays Ko-Ko). But this movie adaptation is pretty far gone. For the first 20 minutes Schertzinger channels Quentin Tarantino: He gives us a capsule summary of the whole plot, followed by a flashback to Nanki-Poo's departure from court (including "If you want to know who we are" and some dialogue pilfered from Act II). Then Nanki-Poo sings the first verse of "The sun whose rays" -- Yum-Yum's song from Act II -- just to mix things up a bit. After that it settles down with a classical "Wand'ring Minstrel I" (interrupted only by one Village-of-the-Damned-looking little girl tugging on Nanki-Poo's sleeve during "Oh, sorrow").Green's Ko-Ko and Sydney Granville's Pooh-Bah are reasonable facsimiles of the stage roles, although they do manage to botch most of Gilbert's jokes with a wooden delivery -- and in many cases the punch lines are simply cut out! (Note to screenwriter: "On the Marine Parade!" isn't funny in isolation, you know.) John Barclay's Mikado is appropriately diabolical, although his evil laughs are curtailed by the cutting of "A more human Mikado"'s middle half. Kenny Baker's Nanki-Poo is an inoffensive tenor (contradiction in terms?); Yum-Yum, on the other hand, sounds like one of the Chipmunks in most of her songs.The songs also suffer. Whose idea was it to throw random church-bell sound effects over the singers in the madrigal? Most detrimentally, "I've got a little list" is cut entirely, as is Katisha's Act II solo, and "Our great Mikado" is shortened by a verse (which renders the lyrics more than a little confusing). To fill the resulting dead air, we get an encore of Ko-Ko's part of "The flowers that bloom in the spring" (yes, with even Nanki-Poo enthusiastically belting out "Oh, bother the flowers of spring!") and an awful lot of random shots of people entering and exiting. Blame the cuts on budget or censorship (or having no idea, or not being there) -- you can't blame them on time constraints.Schertzinger's "Mikado" was the first in a planned series of Pinewood G&S adaptations. One good thing to come out of the Blitz: It was also the last!

This was an unexpected delight. The only exposure I had to The Mikodo was a live "under the stars" show at the Open Air Theater in Washington Crossing Park, N.J. (starring Lee Bristol, president of Bristol/Myers) and the film Topsy Turvy. Kenny Baker was OK, but I can't help thinking that he was "groomed" to be another Dick Powell. I was laughing like a little kid more than once at the zany antics. A bit more physical comedy could have been displayed but that might have endangered the purity of G&S. Looking at Martyn Green's performance made me think of how Buster Keaton could have played Koko. And that brought to mind the old television version with Groucho Marx in the role. Despite the cuts, it was a fine program.

For 1939 and early color this is a film to be remembered. As Maltin says, Kenny Baker is not ideal, mainly because he has the only American accent in a cast of English G&S specialists and strikes a somewhat discordant note.(I saw this film when I was in the second grade and I still have vivid memories of it, I might even say that it opened a whole new world of musical theatre to me).