May we all hope that the Genre is dead and buried. Annoying only begins to describe this waste of film. There is nothing redeeming here whatsoever. If you haven't suffered through it, don't.
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Remember When Movies Didn't Have To Be Politically Correct?
If your whole life was a film that's a waste of film. The suffering was writing that dumb ass comment. How dare you say something that horrible about this movie? The King and I is a classic! This movie is one best of it's genre! One of the best treasures of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musicals. Even today, musicals are and never will be dead or buried!
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I must say that I agree with ABetterDay. I was watching the movie with my family and shortly after it started I wondered what the IMDB consensus was regarding it. In fact, after reading several of the comments bashing ABD I felt compelled to make an IMDB account so that I could defend him (although it was incredibly annoying, with the whole cell phone/credit card certification process). But anyways, this movie went beyond obnoxious at certain points. One in particular was the scene where they put on a play about Uncle Tom's Cabin. It was by far more annoying than anything I can recall watching. All the crashing and high pitched squealing in that scene drove me crazy. It's not even that I hate musicals or anything. I thought The Sound of Music was very good.
shareThis movie does suck donkey balls as does (to a lesser degree) Singing in the rain, My fair lady, guys and dolls, Annie, etc. however the genre itself is valid
The only good musicals are West side story and Fiddler on the roof, storys w/so much passion the only way to capture it is to break out into song. The ones in my first sentence are to jolly, dainty and gay.
Musicals aren't my cup of tea but if you add that "The King and I" displays clear racist undertones plus an eurocentric vision of the world where all Thai people are depicted as stupid and mindless, then I have to agree with the OP.
Besides when none of the thai characters is actually thai or even asian (at least none of the most important characters)... what could you expect?
The movie is beautiful to watch at, beautiful sets and customs, fair musical numbers, etc. But the depiction of Siamese or Thai culture is laughable at best if not offensive. Perhaps 50's audiences didn't care about it but nowadays such kind of movies feels quite outdated and distasteful.
5/10
To be fair, the 1950's were not as PC as the current era. Now, Asian actors would most likely have been hired. It was simply not thought of as inappropriate at the time. While I found some of the performances a bit hammy (I've never liked the story between Tuptim and Lun Tha, it just seemed too contrived), I think that the real strength of The King and I lies in its storytelling. Margaret London's masterly crafted semi-autobiographical novel (which was incidentally banned in Thailand for quite a while) became a great foundation for this tale of adoration overcoming custom. Blaming Rogers and Hammerstein for the story itself of the way the characters were depicted is a bit unfair, because it was not them who put pen to paper and wrote the novel. They added songs, moved around some of the details, and polished it up for the stage and eventually the screen.
The musical genre is so vast and multilayered that narrowing it down to just one musical favorite is difficult. There are the more classically-based musicals in the vein of "Les Miserables," rock operas such as "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Rent," musicals composed of mainly showtunes, such as "Gypsy" or "Thoroughly Modern Millie," and the list goes on. In the vein of old-fashioned family musicals, The King and I ranks up there for me.
Another day, another destiny.