Funny Girl - 1968

Barbra Streisand and Omar Sharif

Funny Girl – 1968: For about 84 minutes this bio pic about early 20th century songstress and comedienne Fanny Brice is a perfectly capable story of a talented woman and her struggle getting onto stage as a "Ziegfield Follies Girl" and then her difficulties managing a relationship with a professional gambler (played here by Omar Sharif). Barbra Striesand got an Oscar for her role as the powerhouse performer Brice, and director Herbert Ross lets her have most of the screen whenever she launches into a singing number. But past that 84 minute mark, the film begins to unravel as a biopic and develops an obsessive preoccupation with Fanny Brice's emotional dilemmas and begins forgetting there's anybody else in the film at all (for awhile there's quite a cast: Anne Francis, Walter Pigeon, Kay Medford and more, but they practically become furniture as the script narrows itself down to just watching Fanny Brice's every move. There's also a daughter who appears then vanishes).

At first Funny Girl had Brice up against any number of obstacles and overcoming them, or at least temporarily outmaneuvering them, and this is a niceley done portrait of a focused performer employing humor and dedication to establish a showbusiness career, but this turns upside down later with everyone praising Brice from one scene to another, and even when Sharif's character decides to divorce our star he can't but heap praise upon her as he does it. Of course, Striesand's singing is strong throughout and unfortunately it is about the only thing that makes the second half of the film seem connected to the first half as story quality evaporates. It's as if the screenwriters just got tired. Funny Girl is half of a very, very good musical.

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Original Page October 15, 2025