Movie Music Archives #002: “30 Is A Dangerous Age, Cynthia”
Plot outline: “Rupert Street (Dudley Moore), a piano player and composer, decides to write a musical and marry before he reaches his thirtieth birthday. One minor problem: he’ll be 30 in six weeks…”
It’s hard to find a film fan who doesn’t go gaga over Stanley Donen’s “Bedazzled” (1967), which has Peter Cook and Dudley Moore cavorting about as The Devil and a short order cook, respectively. It’s also hard to find a film fan who’s ever sat through all of “30 Is A Dangerous Age, Cynthia”, Moore’s limp follow-up effort (without Cook) that has little of the magic and wit that made “Bedazzled” a classic. While well-intentioned, the film suffers from a cardinal sin: it’s just not funny. The one thing it shares with “Bedazzled” is that it has a wonderful score, composed and performed by Moore himself, mostly comprised of swingin’ instrumental jazz pieces. The winner of the bunch, though, is a witty vocal track called “The Real Stuff”, which makes me wonder why Moore didn’t have a complete and successful alternate career as a singer.