Word: yul
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...story of King Mongkut and Anna Leonowens is known to most, having been visited in the 1946 movie Anna and the King of Siam as well as the catchy and charming Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I (starring the unforgettable Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr). The story is simple: the king of Siam hires a foreign schoolteacher to teach his court (including his 58 children) English and give insight into the ways of the West. A clash of traditions and customs ensue, but so does a growing relationship between the stern ruler and the headstrong schoolteacher...
That's especially true since he is played by the marvelous Chow Yun-Fat, who interprets the role as if the cranky volatility of Yul Brynner and Rex Harrison never existed. He has all his hair, doesn't comically fracture his English and, though he occasionally loses his temper, never loses his quiet wit. There is about him a sort of watchful wariness, a thoughtful, insinuating manliness that avoids macho strutting in favor of bemused calculation. He is, in short, an absolute monarch for our postfeminist time. Cutting through the epic gesturings of Andy Tennant's direction, he provides reason...
...focus of the upcoming film. Landon's work was adapted into a movie of the same name in 1946, which in turn inspired a Broadway musical The King and I. Hoping to capitalize on the success of the theatrical version, the show was then produced into a movie starring Yul Bryner in 1956, followed by an abysmal animated feature released by Warner Bros. this past year. All the different versions of the Anna to date have been banned in Thailand due to gross historical inaccuracies and ethnic stereotyping...
Chow's next role is as the King of Siam, opposite Jodie Foster as Anna, in a new version of the story Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II musicalized in 1951 and filmed with Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner five years later. So who needs another King and I movie? Kids, apparently. So here is an animated feature that expands and dumbs down the story. There's some kung fu, a Jafar-style villain with satanic powers, a cartoon menagerie (funny monkey, majestic leopard, etc.), and lame comedy with a crudely drawn, Buddha-shaped fall guy. It's all needless...
...successful will he be? A look at the ur-Hollywood pic, Cecil B. DeMille's "Ten Commandments", is straight from the Democrats' playbook. A young, strong, and less-nutty Chuck Heston leads his people from the cruel bondage of the Pharaoh Ramses (Yul Brynner). Of course there's the must-see Red Sea parting, and for fantasy time, plagues of frogs, boils and locusts that the Big Creep might enjoy visiting on the special prosecutor...