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Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

To me, this movie is perfection.

An Exercise In Nonsense

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Good things: Beautiful sets, decent songs, ok performances, Higgins is fairly funny, and an easy to follow story.Bad things: WAY too long, useless songs especially from the dad, Audrey Hepburn has one of the worst voices of all time in the fist half of the movie (I know this is on purpose, but my god), and Higgins is a huge ass.My biggest and worst complaint about this fine movie, is that the run time is bloated with useless musical numbers, this is a 1hr 50min movie tops, but because of Bollywood type musical numbers it (like a Bollywood movie) is bloated to 2hrs 50mins. I think it's perfectly fine, but with heavy flaws.

This film shows cinema at its finest in producing such a classy and acclaimed film and musical. Considering how cinema has taken a downward spiral with today's vulgar and thin plots this film could be considered as a remnant of the golden age of cinema. We see a refined and distrustful professor, Henry Higgins, who is cynical of everyone around him. From his maid, his close friends and even a simple unknown flower girl. As an accomplished and intelligent professor he is snobbish and part of high society. He is so confident in his abilities that he easily accepts a wager to change the flower girl he just made into a respectable lady. The acting from Rex Harrison deserves high praise, it is effortless and believable. The same can be said for Audrey Hepburn who plays the role of a low class person to perfection. We are also treated to first class music and performances from the cast, musicals never seemed so enjoyable. We see Henry teach Eliza how to be a lady and their constant quarrels. The experiment is such a success that high society is none the wiser as to her transformation. However Audrey feels like a prize or object in a rich white man's game. More importantly despite his success, the experience of tutoring Eliza has humbled him. The end of the film where they show respect and care for each other was a masterstroke as no romance was needed.

A movie from 1964, directed by George Cukor. Starring Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison and Stanley Holloway. The story of Eliza Doolittle, poor flower girl, and Henry Higgins, rich phonetics professor. Professor Higgins agrees to teach Eliza how to speak correctly in English. Both will have benefits of it: Eliza should find a better job, and professor Higgins will win a bet. The story is very simple but well written. Great acting, great music and great choreography. I liked it, but to be honest I was bored sometimes.

George Cukor's "My Fair Lady" is as close to auteur cinema as "Baby Geniuses" to "The Godfather", nothing remotely ambitious on the field of philosophy, religion or any form of abstract thinking, but I'm still using a word (one I personally hate) to describe it: it is a pretentious film. As intellectually vacuous as it is, it is pretentious in the sense that it takes a sweet, enchanting story, made of charming and engaging characters, and drag on for almost three hours for a plot requiring one hour less. This is a case where a little less would have been a lot more."West Side Story" was longer but its fast-paced rhythm and the catchy songs actually drove the plot instead of slowing it down, "The Sound of Music" felt a tad long, but it had a rather dense plot, while "My Fair Lady"'s can be summed up into a spot-it with a marker. It is about linguist Professor Higgings meeting a vulgar flower girl named Eliza Doolitlle and after months of training, he turns her into a lady, in the process, he falls in love with her, although he refuses to admit it. But in the end, they get together, bada-beep, bada-boom. There are a few subplots but they are merely dressing, the piece of resistance is what everyone remembers.Now, I'm not criticizing the conventional fairy-tale aspect of the story, but it was two-hour material, plain and simple. No, they had to stretch it to three hours, with the obligatory intermission. Obviously, they knew they had a Best Picture contender so it had to pretend to be as epic as "Lawrence of Arabia", "West Side Story" or "Tom Jones". So it takes like half an hour for the film to take off and basically, each significant moment is interrupted by a musical interlude, I liked the "With a Little Bit of Luck" song but what did it have to do with the story anyway? Apparently, we were supposed to enjoy it and that was enough a reason.The film actually makes me question the appeal of musicals, why should people singing and dancing together be an entertaining sight? My guess is that it was the taste of the time, and people loved to enjoy in theaters what they could see on the stage, or maybe it was the star-system and Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison were the kind of offers one couldn't refuse. But I'd rather have that sirtaki in "Zorbas" or five minutes of "Dr. Strangelove" than any of these tiresome musical acts, at least these films had something to show, even "Mary Poppins" had animation, I'm afraid "My Fair Lady" had a rather thin plot with music used as fillers,It is a difficult-to-review film because I'm not really even interested in reviewing it, it is even based on a lie, that Audrey Hepburn could be believable as a crass girl, it's like imagining Grace Kelly playing a prostitute, there's nothing such as limited range, but we know Hepburn can only "act" her way through a character like Eliza Doolittle and gets easier to handle once she becomes the classy woman she's always been, that ugly duckling thing couldn't fool anyone, and if she didn't overact, she way overdid her accent. Rex Harrison, as annoying as sexist as he was, was pretty convincing as Higgins but the whole relationship rang abominably false. It is supposed to be a love story but most of the time, these two keep snarling at each other, they couldn't even exchange one lousy kiss at the end, I know it's all about subtext, but still. Still, this film worked and became one of the all-time box-office successes, an event by itself, one I would never get. And don't get me started with the Oscars. Granted the film won the Best Costume, Art Direction and all the categories you'd never remember the names, but Best Picture? Best Director? What makes Cukor's directing so exceptional? Is it more difficult to direct a film like this than "Strangelove"? The 60's used to reward cinematic excellence but art shouldn't be made at the expense of a story, and it's only justice that "Dr. Strangelove" is more celebrated today than "My Fair Lady". And if you want an excellent romance with Audrey Hepburn, take "Roman Holiday" or "Sabrina".There's one thing I enjoyed though, it was the Bonus features and I was more interested to see Rex Harrison being natural and Audrey Hepburn as sweet as usual, I thought to myself, I don't know if younger actors would've been as good, but if the cast had played these parts as naturally, it could have been something. And then there was Jack Warner who, during a press conference, made a remarkable speech about old school Hollywood cinema and wished directors wouldn't try to copy European filmmakers, you could tell the disdain in his tone, well, he was right in foreshadowing the end of the studio system (and even in the interviews, the productions costs were a matter of discussions), these costly musicals almost bankrupted the studios, because for one "My Fair Lady", you had a few disasters.The film marks with "The Sound of Music" the swan songs of an era , the time for better movies were to come, and it's extraordinary to believe that the film was only two years before "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" and three before "Bonnie and Clyde" and "The Graduate". Being a hardcore New Hollywood fan, a production like "My Fair Lady" could only make me feel cold, I'm not even sure this will be a review I'd love to read again once.... but I'll end with a piece of advice, you want to see it? Fine. Be sure you're doing something at the same time, otherwise, time will feel painfully long.