Rogers & Hammerstein's 'South Pacific' was gloriously adapted from the Broadway play in 1958 with Mitzi Gaynor playing the role of Nelly Forbush the Nurse, which Mary Martin made famous on the stage. I remember watching the movie when I was growing up. I was utterly captivated by John Kerr as Lt. Joe Cable, Jaunita Hall as Bloody Mary (she's the girl I love! Now ain't that too damn bad?) and Rossano Brazzi as Emile de Becque. I still sing 'Dites-Moi' absently in the shower. The first fifteen minutes were enough to keep me watching for over two hours. How can you not love a group of horny sailors, led by a balding, tattooed Luther Billis and a 7-foot-tall baritone named Stewpot, singing:

There ain't a thing that's wrong with any man here
That can't be cured by putting him near
A girly, womanly, female, feminine dame!

Come on, you know you love it. They're just freaky enough to keep you watching. The perfect middle ground between 'An Officer and a Gentleman' and 'Rocky Horror.'

When I was perhaps fifteen, my father gave me the book by James Michener and I fell in love all over again, this time with a richer appreciation of all the characters, of the political and racial nuances of the time. And less than two years later, when I heard a remake was in production with Harry Connick Jr. as Cable and Rade Serbedzija as De Becque, I had to admit that I was curious. Connick had been making me swoon for years with his music, and so I already knew him to be a better singer than Kerr (though he was talented and charming, singing was not his strong suit). And you can't deny that he has a certain charisma that shines when he sings. I couldn't wait to hear him sing "Younger Than Springtime" and "You've Got To Be Taught". The Bosnian Serbedzija I knew from what few films he'd made to be released in America by 2001, which included 'The Saint', 'Mission: Impossible 2', and 'Snatch'. Usually he plays the Eastern European villain; though I doubted he'd be able to drop the accent convincingly, I was looking forward to seeing what he could do in a protagonist's role.

And then I heard the news: Glenn Close was playing Nelly the Nurse. The news was equivalent to jumping the shark, and the film hadn't even aired yet.

Though I'm as much of a Close fan as the next person, she was already over fifty when this new film was made. Nelly the Nurse, in Michener's book, is a young green "cock-eyed optimist" who hasn't yet lost all of her girlish innocence in her outlook of the world. Gaynor was only 27 when she made the original film, though with her hair and make-up she looks closer to 24. But no amount of make-up can keep Close from looking over forty. As soon as you see her, you know she's miscast just as certainly as you know the sun will rise in the morning. If she could have made the film around the time 'Fatal Attraction' was released, it might not have been so bad. But Close is better aged to play Nelly's socialite Little Rock mother than the young naive nurse. Not to mention she wouldn't last five minutes in front of Simon Cowell with that singing voice.

Lori Tann Chinn, in the role of Bloody Mary, suffers more at the hands of the director than anything else. She dives head-first into the charcter ("Grass skirt! Fo' dolla'!") but she's hardly used to her best advantage. In the pivotal scene where Mary first sees Cable, she's meant to be struck with the knowledge that this man will change her life forever. "You make trouble for me?" she says. Juanita Hall and Kerr, under director Joshua Logan in 1958, made your heart skip a beat. In 2001, Richard Pearce can't recapture that energy, despite Chinn and Connick's best efforts.

The Hallmark Channel has begun to air the 2001 film, and I have to wonder why they're having such a hard time finding movies that they must air this one again. It was hard enough to suffer through in 2001.

"French planter stenchy stinker." So is whoever decided this remake be a good idea.