King and I, The

In 1956, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II refused to consider Maureen O’Hara for the film version of their musical tale of East meets West—she was too undignified a star for their masterpiece. Well, R&H are safely dead now, and their heirs evidently decided dignity be damned—might as well let Warner Bros. turn the show into a cheesy piece of infantile animated pap. The original show, though historically inaccurate, was a character-driven piece that doesn’t suit a cartoon, so they’ve added a teenybopper romance between prince and servant girl and villain with his racially demeaning sidekick. It’s a travesty and a desecration that could, unless it meets with the box-office disaster it so richly deserves, ruin a great musical for generations to come.