The Boy Friend (1971) | Full Movie | Movies Anywhere

A lavish, affectionately caricatured pastiche of the backstage thirties film musical, but being Russell he has felt it necessary to aim at several other targets at the same time. The surprising thing is that on almost every level he has succeeded.

I am less surprised than some of my colleagues that Russell's film of The Boy Friend turns out to be so hugely enjoyable and so packed with cinematic verve.

The last great MGMusical. Russell both parodies and pays homage to stage and screen musicals of the '20s through '40s, out-Busying Berkeley by showing what the movies' great dance director could have done with a wider screen.

It is an acute, duplicitous, discomfiting movie whose message, finally, is that all times are tough for the people who must live through them, and glow golden only for those who survive them, or imagine them.