Review of Darling Lili (1970) by Richard D — 18 Oct 2016

Julie Andrews stars as a singer living in England during WWI who is also a spy for the Germans. She seduces American officer Rock Hudson to gain vital information from him, and ends up falling in love with him.

This project was directly spawned by the marriage of Blake Edwards and Andrews. Both were at the commercial peak of their careers, so studios were hopping to green light any collaboration between the two.

Edwards was eager to show the world Andrews the way he saw her ... not the squeaky clean star of "Mary Poppins" and "The Sound of Music". This is a terrible film. I'm really not fond of Andrews, who always strikes me as a lifeless, phony screen presence.

She has absolutely no chemistry with Hudson (they apparently hated each other), who can be a better actor than he is often given credit for, but not here. He's wooden and distracted whenever he's on screen.

The film cannot decide what it wants to be. It was not a musical when William Peter Blatty wrote the screenplay. The musical numbers that are included sporadically not only don't further the plot, they often sabotage the narrative flow, Edwards seems to want to be doing a serious drama, but he includes a pair of French army intelligence agents that seem to have wandered in from a Pink Panther film.