This popular but overlong vehicle for Julie Andrews succeeds despite a confusing plot and a screenplay that's full of excess. There's much to enjoy, not least the bizarre appearances by Broadway divas Beatrice Lillie and Carol Channing, of whom a little goes an awfully long way. The real delight is co-star James Fox, dancing and romancing as if to the musical born, plus the utterly delectable Mary Tyler Moore, whose natural good-naturedness proves a fine counterpoint to Andrews's studied brittleness. Director George Roy Hill lacks both the lightness of touch and the surety of style that this movie desperately needs, and although the production values are sumptuous, Millie stubbornly refuses to become Thoroughly Modern, and now looks sadly dated. It's best dipped into rather than fully endured.

Millie Dillmount, a fearless young lady fresh from Salina, Kansas, determined to experience Life, sets out to see the world in the rip-roaring Twenties. With high spirits and wearing one of those new high hemlines, she arrives in New York to test the "modern" ideas she had been reading about back in Kansas: "I've taken the girl out of Kansas. Now I have to take Kansas out of the girl!"