"Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol"
"Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol"
madlibrarian
Broadway Star Joined: 8/15/06
#1"Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol"
Posted: 12/22/12 at 9:31pm
We offer this critique as a service to anyone in a later time zone.
NBC's "Magoo" broadcast tonight was SEVERELY cut, the better to make room for about twelve minutes of commercials.
The entire Broadway framing device and its song are missing.
Half of "We're Reprehensible" was cut.
Magoo's reprise of "All Alone" is interrupted mid-song, for a commercial!
It's a dreadful thing to do to a fondly remembered Styne/Merrill score.
And a stunningly arrogant demonstration of why many of us are just about through with network television.
#2"Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol"
Posted: 12/22/12 at 10:23pm
It was savage, wasn't it? I expected the framing device to be gone, but this was brutal. In addition to what you mentioned, there was a big internal cut in The Lord's Bright Blessing. Instead of verse, refrain, verse, refrain, it was verse, verse, refrain. The last half of the finale was gone, the reprise of that song. There were dialogue cuts too.
Only once have I seen worse. Thirty or 40 years ago, the local afternoon movie showed the Astaire/Rogers film Carefree. In order to fit it into a one hour time slot with commercials *and* Dialing for Dollars, they cut all the musical numbers. All. From a Fred and Ginger movie.
Updated On: 12/22/12 at 10:23 PM
