The Sound of Music (1965)

Captain von Trapp goes from summoning his kids with a whistle to melting over one song so fast you could get whiplash. That’s the first knock on The Sound of Music. The second is the middle, a long romantic rivalry with a baroness that nobody watching is rooting for, in a 174-minute movie. Julie Andrews makes Maria warm, clumsy and completely sincere, and the Do-Re-Mi sequence, bouncing across Salzburg’s fountains, gardens and bridges, is a delight. Christopher Plummer is great as a stiff man slowly remembering how to feel, and the moment he joins his children in song is a real lump-in-the-throat scene. Then the story turns serious. As Austria is swallowed by Nazi Germany, the Captain refuses to serve the new regime, and the film treats that quiet, dangerous defiance with real gravity. It made $160.9 million domestic on a reported $8.2M. An 8.6 because the songs are perfect and the courage underneath them is real. $5,034 says you eye your curtains tomorrow and briefly consider whether they’d make decent play clothes.

What works: Julie Andrews is radiant, the songs are flawless, and the final act treats the family’s quiet defiance of the Nazi takeover with real seriousness.

What doesn’t: At 174 minutes the middle sags, the Baroness subplot drags, and the Captain’s change of heart happens almost instantly.

Who it’s for: Families who want one movie everyone from grandma to the youngest kid will sit through, and anyone who claims they hate musicals.