With 1964's My Fair Lady, we got a musical retelling of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. Although this film suffered from some of the flaws I feel are inherent to musicals, I found it surprisingly enjoyable.

The story takes the old ugly duckling formula and turns it into a musical. Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) is a lower-class girl who sells flowers on the street for money. Elitist, misogynistic phonetics expert Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) encounters her as she plies her wares and decides to take a challenge from cohort Colonel Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White). Higgins will test his theories of how dialect and accents establish our places in life and make it possible for Eliza to pass for a "lady" in a few weeks.

As the time passes, Higgins works his magic and inevitably, Eliza starts to turn into a swan. This leads to some personal complications, of course, and mild friction and discomfort ensue.

Virtually without exception, my least favorite parts of Lady involve the musical numbers themselves. Although some of the tunes are fairly catchy - I still have parts of "Show Me" running through my head – these segments really tend to bog down the story.

As was the case with Oliver!, Lady includes an excessive number of production pieces, many of which last an exceedingly long amount of time. Actually, this tendency isn't as bad in Lady as it is in Oliver!, which contains song and dance bits that just go on forever. The numbers in Lady are long but not absurdly so.

Still, the movie could use some judicious tightening. Too many of the songs exist just for the sake of plopping a tune into the show.

For example, toward the end of the film we hear "Get Me To the Church On Time". This tune spotlights a very secondary character in the person of Eliza's father Alfred (Stanley Holloway) and it nearly brings the whole affair to a screeching halt. As the romantic entanglements of the leads progress, the film suddenly brakes so we can spend a fair amount of time on a big production number starring a marginal character. This is very odd, and it in no way furthers the plot.

Frankly, if you lose the songs, the 173-minute running time of Lady would probably drop to about an hour. With better editing - and the omission of the less useful numbers - the movie should have run about two hours. That length would better suit the material, as the current incarnation simply goes on for far too long.

However, extended musicals seemed in vogue in the Sixties, a period during which an amazing four of the ten Best Picture winners were from that genre, and the shortest of the four - West Side Story - still filled more than two and a half hours. At least the songs of Lady are the most pleasant of those four films; I don't particularly like any of the tunes, but they pass by innocuously, which is the best I can expect.

As for the remainder of the film, I find that Lady provides a charming and entertaining mix of comedy and light romance. I’m surprised just how underemphasized the romantic aspects become; although the pairing that ends the story feels inevitable, it's handled in a gentle way that appears refreshing.

Some of the comedy seems especially strong. I'm rarely amused by material in this sort of piece - the gags tend to appear forced and bland - but some of the bits in Lady are pretty good.

For example, the scene in which Eliza "debuts" at the horse races is terrific; although she has the mannerisms of a proper lady, she retains her streetwise notions in the topics she discusses and the way she forms her sentences. It's great fun to watch Hepburn's mannered and awkward attempt to fit in with this group as she displays the letter of Higgins' teaching but not the spirit.

Really, it seems to be the excellent cast that makes Lady work. Hepburn's casting as Eliza was controversial; she was picked over Julie Andrews, who played the part on Broadway, despite Harrison's endorsement of Andrews. (Julie rebounded nicely through her part in the same year's Mary Poppins, for which she won Best Actress in what may have been a politically-oriented competition.)

Would Andrews have been better? Perhaps - at least she would have done her own singing, whereas Hepburn had to be dubbed by Marni Nixon, who also did Natalie Wood's vocals in West Side Story. However, I think Hepburn does quite a good job in the role.

Some have also objected to Hepburn's casting because they feel she doesn't look common and unappealing enough during the early parts of the film. I disagree, as I was rather surprised to note how drab and grimy they were able to make the lovely Hepburn look. To my eyes, at least, the Eliza of the film's first 30 minutes or so in no ways resembles the beautiful creature she becomes. Hepburn also doesn't offer the greatest Cockney accent, though it sounds good to me, possibly because.

On the positive side, Hepburn's beauty is an asset simply because she "cleans up" better than Andrews. While Julie was attractive, she never looked really gorgeous, and I think the impact of Eliza's improvements feels greater through Hepburn.

I also think Hepburn adds a surprising toughness and grit to the role that I can't imagine from a prim and proper type like Andrews. Granted, before I saw the film, I couldn't imagine Hepburn doing this well either, so I shouldn't judge. Now that I've seen the movie, though, I can't think of anyone in the part but Audrey; perhaps this is because I don't care about the songs, which are the parts that would most benefit from the presence of Andrews, but I think Hepburn does very well in the part.

Also terrific - and less controversial - is Harrison, who creates a very gruff and snobby Higgins. Harrison adds just the right dash of arrogance and elitist charm to the part; his egotism and aloofness make him believable in a tough role, and somehow he manages to provide enough charm to keep us from hating him. He can't sing to save his life, but his odd speak-singing works well enough to move along the story. Besides, I don't care about the musical numbers anyway, and since Harrison does nicely in the straight dramatic portions, he makes the part work.

While I can't say that I love My Fair Lady, I’m surprised at how much I like it. My negative feelings toward musicals run deep, so for me to really enjoy one seems pretty remarkable. The songs are many but fairly painless, and the parts that lack tunes are fun and charming, with the end result a winner.

My Fair Lady appears in an aspect ratio of approximately 2.35:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. Expect a top-notch presentation.

Sharpness worked well. A few slightly soft shots appeared, but those remained minor and appeared to stem from the original photography. Overall definition looked terrific. No issues with shimmering or jagged edges occurred, and I saw no signs of edge haloes or invasive digital noise reduction. Print flaws failed to mar the visuals..

Colors looked wonderful. With a broad, lively palette, the hues seemed dynamic and vivid, with a terrific array of rich tones on display. Blacks seemed deep and rich, while shadows offered nice clarity and delineation. Across the board, this became a simply splendid transfer.

I also felt pleased with the film's Dolby TrueHD 7.1 soundtrack. The soundfield seemed forward-oriented, and it became active in that domain. Not surprisingly, most of the action revolved around the music, which was well produced here. The songs displayed strong stereo separation and also blended to the surrounds, although the rears mainly provided light reinforcement of the score. This remained a heavily forward-oriented track, so don’t expect much material from the back speakers.

Effects and quite a lot of dialogue also spread to the side speakers and sometimes panned between channels as well. The placement of the speech seemed questionable at times. It could end up in a "neverland" between speakers that was somewhat distracting. However, this problem seemed minor, and my overall impression of the audio was that it seemed nicely broad.

The quality was generally positive. Speech sounded clear and intelligible - discounting the severe accents we heard, as they should seem hard to understand – with only a little reediness on display. Effects were largely clean and fairly realistic; some bits actually featured a little bass as well.

The music itself - easily the most important aspect of this mix – was usually good. The music showed some signs of age, as it lacked the dynamic range we'd expect of a more recent recording, but it seemed fine. Nothing here dazzled, but the material held up well for its age.

How did the 2015 50th Anniversary Blu-ray compare to the original BD from 2011? Audio seemed a bit clearer and more dynamic. The 2015 mix offered a more restricted soundscape, as it lacked the moderately active surround usage of the old track, but I didn’t mind that. I suspect the 2015 mix more accurately represented the original audio, so that made the lack of surround material fine with me.

Visuals became a more obvious source of improvement. Whereas the 2011 transfer was mushy and suffered from many digital issues, the 2015 Blu-ray looked vivid, concise and film-like. This turned into an impressive upgrade.

The Blu-ray replicates most of the prior disc’s extras. We launch with a 1994 documentary called More Loverly Than Ever: My Fair Lady Through the Ages. Hosted by actor Jeremy Brett, this 57-minute, 58-second program looks at the movie’s history and its restoration. It mixes film clips, archival materials, and interviews. We get notes from art director Gene Allen, singer Marni Nixon, the restoration team of Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz, Mirabella magazine founder Grace Mirabella, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, actor Stanley Holloway’s son Julian, Martin Scorsese, Variety senior columnist Army Archerd, Alan Jay Lerner’s former wife Nancy Olson-Livingston, assistant film editor John Burnett, digital artist Kevin Lingesfelder, re-recording mixer Bob Litt, Julie Andrews, actor Theo Bikel, critic Rex Reed, costume designer Bob Mackie, restoration assistant editor Mike Hyatt, and former head of Warner Bros. production Rudy Fehr.

The program quickly covers the film’s promotion and reception, the history of the story and of the project. After the first 10 minutes, we start to hear about the restoration. The rest of the program cuts between background information about the movie and notes about restoring the flick.

Olson-Livingston’s remarks about how Lerner came up with some of the songs seem particularly interesting. It’s intriguing to hear Andrews relate her reactions to not getting the part in the movie and her opinion about whether this helped her get her Oscar for Mary Poppins. A few other controversies receive attention, which came as a moderate surprise; the program seems notably less puffy than I expected. “Lovely” covers a lot of territory in a reasonably efficient manner. It doesn’t create a thorough and excellent documentary, but it goes through a lot of subject in decent detail and comes across as pretty solid.

1963 Production Kickoff Dinner presents footage of that event. The 23-minute, 20-second piece starts with silent shots of the banquet itself and then offers short promotional interviews with Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison and producer Jack L. Warner. It concludes with a mix of more images from the dinner, some with sound this time.

The chats seem surprisingly hard-hitting, at least for the circumstances and the era. The interviewer asks about problems in Hollywood and pushes his theories pretty heavily; he even tells Harrison people regard him as difficult! Some of the dinner footage itself isn’t very useful due to the lack of audio, but the interviews present some interesting material.

Next we find audio of George Cukor as he directs Baroness Bina Rothschild. In this two-minute, 39-second snippet, we watch photos from the set and hear Rothschild endlessly repeat variations on the line “she’s quite the loveliest young lady at the ball!” I may die if I ever hear that line again, but this piece does offer an insightful glimpse of the directing process.

One cool addition to the disc presents two of the film's songs with Audrey Hepburn's original vocals intact. We hear "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" and "Show Me" with Audrey's voice instead of Marni Nixon's.

I was honestly surprised to find something like this, since it has the potential to seem cruel. However, Hepburn didn't humiliate herself with her singing. Although she hits a fair number of flat notes and clearly wasn't a strong enough vocalist to carry the film, her performances aren't bad; they're simply mediocre, which isn't good enough for a big-budget production like this.

Under Galleries, we get four collections of images. These include “Cecil Beaton Sketches” (58 frames), “Black and White Production Stills” (68), “Color Production Stills” (52), and “Documents and Publicity” (29). These provide some decent materials but don’t seem particularly compelling.

The next area brings a Rex Harrison radio interview. Through this one-minute, six-second piece, we hear Harrison provide puffy comments about his experiences while we look at promotional images. These bits are good for archival reasons but not tremendously fascinating otherwise, and the images lose some value due to the videotape time readings in the top part of the screen; these obstruct our view of the promotional materials.

Three “theatrical featurettes” appear, and we start with the nine-minute, 31-second The Fairest Fair Lady. Like the other two, this program comes from the period of the film's theatrical release and it completely focuses on behind the scenes details.

The coverage seems sketchy since the piece is so short, and it mostly admires the big quality of the production; for example, we learn that in this tremendously-complex undertaking, they had one woman whose sole job was to make sure that everyone wore their gloves!

The Story of a Lady runs five minutes, five seconds and features more fluffy commentary, with an emphasis on casting and crew. Design for a Lady (8:22) brings the same approach to sets and costumes. In all of these, the focus remains strictly promotional, but since the presentation differs from the glorified trailer approach of modern featurettes, they’re somewhat fun. Because “Design” offers comments from costume designer Cecil Beaton, it works the best.

After this we see LA Premiere Footage. This four-minute, 53-second newsreel describes the event in breathless terms as we see various notables arrive. It’s another moderately interesting piece of historical material.

A similar piece, the British Premiere runs two minutes, 17 seconds. It appears less breathless than “LA” but consists of the same kind of footage.

Five clips show up under Production Tests. With a total running time of seven minutes, four seconds, we get “Lighting” (0:56), “Wilfrid Hyde-White Make-Up” (0:47), “Rain/Set” (0:49), “Covent Garden Lighting Test” (0:44) and “Alt. Higgins/Pickering Screen Test” (3:48). Narrated by actor’s son Alex Hyde-White, we see a variety of snippets that let us view background elements. Hyde-White’s comments add to the footage and make this a nice collection.

Three clips show up under “Awards”. Rex Harrison’s Golden Globe Acceptance Speech runs 47 seconds. Apparently Harrison couldn’t make it to the ceremony, so it shows a filmed chat. At the Academy Awards Ceremony Highlights, we see acceptance speeches from George Cukor, Rex Harrison and Jack L. Warner.

Finally, Rex Harrison BFI Honor (2:08) allows us to see the actor deliver a canned speech from the set of Lady. All of these become interesting in a historical manner.

Within Comments on a Lady we find separate interviews with Martin Scorsese (one minute, 19 seconds) and Andrew Lloyd Webber (one minute, four seconds). Scorsese discusses the need for film preservation and his work in that realm; he never specifically gets into Lady, and his comments seem fairly bland and generic. Webber talks about his work with Lady lyricist Alan Jay Lerner on The Phantom of the Opera; this never happened because Lerner took ill. This subject seems more intriguing, but Webber doesn’t tell us anything very interesting.

Finally, we get a slew of trailers for Lady. This area includes seven promos, and the “teaser” comes with seven alternate “tags”; these add the name of the theater where the roadshow would play in a specific city.

A second disc offers a DVD copy of Lady. It lacks any of the Blu-ray’s extras.

Note that the 2015 Blu-ray loses an audio commentary from the prior Blu-ray. It was a good chat, so its absence disappoints.

Although it has a number of flaws, enough of My Fair Lady seems delightful and endearing for it to be worth watching. The Blu-ray provides excellent visuals as well as good picture and supplements. This easily becomes the best My Fair Lady ever to hit home video.

To rate this film visit the 2004 DVD review of MY FAIR LADY