Bye Bye Birdie is truly painful. This started out sort of cute, but it became completely insipid. The only character of any interest is the Chita Rivera character (played by Janet Leigh in a faux Latina performance). Leigh is billed first here, which is odd because she has two duets and no songs of her own. Jesse Pearson, who played Birdie on tour, plays him here, and his appeal is... inexplicable. He's strangely wooden and unattractive, and one cannot understand why any young girls or grown women would be passing out because of how sexy he is. Ann-Margret can sing, of course, and Dick Van Dyke is his usual silly self, but no one else really can even sing. Oh! and Maureen Stapleton is cast as Dick Van Dyke's mother. They were the same age! It's outrageous.
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