Out of step.

I don't know why we have film reviewers. So often the leading critics see the film completely differently as do the theatergoers. I just watched much of a film I remember hating when I was 26. Today I hated it even more. The film was Finian's Rainbow, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and starring Petula Clark, Tommy Steele, Fred Astaire, and Don Francks who should not have been given a leading film role and I don't think ever was again. This classic 1947 musical has some of the best songs ever written for Broadway, and one of the worst books...some claptrap about a pot of gold and racism. Now some reviewers called it the best film musical of the decade. Others lamented at it being such a disappointment.  The alway overrated Roger Ebert loved it, while the equally respected critic Renata Adler rightly pegged it as a turkey as did most audience members. But I'm sure there were those who loved it despite the pathetic direction, the overacting of Mr. Steele, the children who could have been in The Village of the Damned, and poor Fred Astaire who looked tired and weak. Like I say. I don't know why we have film reviewers.