This gets 5 stars for pretty good special effects and nice production values. (Director Stanley Donen probably got practice for these pre-CGI effects by directing Fred Astaire dance up the walls in "Royal Wedding")
For the rest of it: How can a musical by Lerner & Loewe ("My Fair Lady", "Gigi", "Camelot", "Brigadoon", etc.) directed by Stanley Donen ("Singing in the Rain", "Bedazzled", "Charade", etc.) go wrong, especially if it features a small but notable cast that includes guest shots by Bob Fosse and Gene Wilder? Quite easily, actually.
Perhaps part of the problem is the source material. The young adult book THE LITTLE PRINCE is a sweet but didactic tome. Lerner, arguably the best lyric writer of his time (a time including Oscar Hammerstein III) was also a slow and lazy worker. He was also known for filling his body with large amounts of chemicals. He always had a problem with structure and always did better work when he started with good source material ("Pygmalion"/"My Fair Lady").
THE LITTLE PRINCE has an episodic structure. One would think Lerner would leap at the opportunity to present songs in different worlds, with characters having such various points of view.
Instead, the bulk of the songs are given to the aviator character by Richard Kiley (notable exceptions are Fosse and Wilder). Lerner alters the character of the King and changes the Geographer into an Historian (rendering the character senseless). He drops other promising figures, adds a General to the mix, and makes the whole story even more doctrinaire than the original.
Clive Revill and Victor Spinetti do superb jobs in shamefully short roles, as the Businessman and the Historian, respectively. They do not have unique songs. As they are photographed in exactly the same way (through some weird fish-eye lens -- I'm no photographer so I don't know a more precise term), their characters are not distinctive. One may be forgiven for thinking they're on the same world and might be related.
In slightly longer roles, Bob Fosse and Gene Wilder have unique songs, and also interesting settings. Both play animals. Fosse is the Snake and he has a sinuous dance that might be beautiful if it weren't shown in bits and pieces (there is also a real snake and it plays a large part in the movie for all you Ophidiophobics -- including me). Wilder is the Fox and he's fairly typical early Wilder. But they're lost in the whole of the movie.
And Stanley Donen? Lest we forget, he also directed "Blame it on Rio." To be fair, he apparently helmed only one movie between 1967's "Bedazzled" and 1974's "Little Prince." He may have been rusty.
The main problem here is Lerner. Loewe's music is good in his last outing with Lerner, even if the tunes lack his typical hummability. Lerner's lyrics lack his clever wordplay. They're repetitive, redundant (those two words in juxtaposition give you some idea of what the lyrics are like) and lackluster.
The actors do their best. Richard Kiley is a strong anchor for the show as a whole. But "The Little Prince" leaves one unsatisfied.
For the rest of it: How can a musical by Lerner & Loewe ("My Fair Lady", "Gigi", "Camelot", "Brigadoon", etc.) directed by Stanley Donen ("Singing in the Rain", "Bedazzled", "Charade", etc.) go wrong, especially if it features a small but notable cast that includes guest shots by Bob Fosse and Gene Wilder? Quite easily, actually.
Perhaps part of the problem is the source material. The young adult book THE LITTLE PRINCE is a sweet but didactic tome. Lerner, arguably the best lyric writer of his time (a time including Oscar Hammerstein III) was also a slow and lazy worker. He was also known for filling his body with large amounts of chemicals. He always had a problem with structure and always did better work when he started with good source material ("Pygmalion"/"My Fair Lady").
THE LITTLE PRINCE has an episodic structure. One would think Lerner would leap at the opportunity to present songs in different worlds, with characters having such various points of view.
Instead, the bulk of the songs are given to the aviator character by Richard Kiley (notable exceptions are Fosse and Wilder). Lerner alters the character of the King and changes the Geographer into an Historian (rendering the character senseless). He drops other promising figures, adds a General to the mix, and makes the whole story even more doctrinaire than the original.
Clive Revill and Victor Spinetti do superb jobs in shamefully short roles, as the Businessman and the Historian, respectively. They do not have unique songs. As they are photographed in exactly the same way (through some weird fish-eye lens -- I'm no photographer so I don't know a more precise term), their characters are not distinctive. One may be forgiven for thinking they're on the same world and might be related.
In slightly longer roles, Bob Fosse and Gene Wilder have unique songs, and also interesting settings. Both play animals. Fosse is the Snake and he has a sinuous dance that might be beautiful if it weren't shown in bits and pieces (there is also a real snake and it plays a large part in the movie for all you Ophidiophobics -- including me). Wilder is the Fox and he's fairly typical early Wilder. But they're lost in the whole of the movie.
And Stanley Donen? Lest we forget, he also directed "Blame it on Rio." To be fair, he apparently helmed only one movie between 1967's "Bedazzled" and 1974's "Little Prince." He may have been rusty.
The main problem here is Lerner. Loewe's music is good in his last outing with Lerner, even if the tunes lack his typical hummability. Lerner's lyrics lack his clever wordplay. They're repetitive, redundant (those two words in juxtaposition give you some idea of what the lyrics are like) and lackluster.
The actors do their best. Richard Kiley is a strong anchor for the show as a whole. But "The Little Prince" leaves one unsatisfied.