Flower Drum Song (Universal-International), a $4,000,000, 133-minute film version of the Broadway musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein, offers the U.S. moviegoer roughly the same sensation he would get if he sat down with a single pair of chopsticks before a tun of Sook Muy Dahn Faah Tong.*
The stage show was the usual product of the R. & H. collaboration: sexy-slick and yet phony-wholesome—a creation in the spirit of a reversible cornflake that can also serve as a sequin. In the movie nothing of value has been eliminated, but nothing of interest has been added.
The film still tells essentially the same story: Chinese girl (Miyoshi Umeki), a "picture bride" from Hong Kong, meets Chinese-American boy (James Shigeta). But boy loves Chinese-American girl (Nancy Kwan), a nightspot stripper who wants to cover her nakedness with greenbacks. In the end, true love triumphs in a large, vulgar Chinese wedding.
Flower Drum Song is clearly photographed, and brightly colored. But the songs—except for a charming little villanelle sung by Actress Umeki—don't exactly ring the gong, and Choreographer Hermes Pan has apparently reworked some routines from Chu Chin Chow. Also, moviegoers may be disturbed to find that most of the Chinese characters in the picture are played by actors of various other Oriental extractions. Honest, fellows, they really don't all look alike.
*Corn soup.