Funny Girl (film) "funny girl" with her body, voice, gesture, and character, tying together her Jewishness and oddness. The film values women over men and portrays the men as dependent to their women; it reverses the gender roles. "Funny Girl" helped change the way women were viewed and used comedy to deflect Jewish mockery. Streisand was widely praised by critics, with "The New Yorker"s Pauline Kael calling it "A bravura performance ... As Fanny Brice, she has the wittiest comic inflections since the comediennes of the 30s; she makes written dialogue sound like inspired improvisation. ... Streisand's triumphant talent rides right over the
Funny Girl (film) arrangements," he recalled. "They dropped eight songs from the Broadway show and we were asked to write some new ones. They didn’t want to go with success. It was the old-fashioned MGM Hollywood way of doing a musical. They always change things to their way of vision, and they always do it wrong. But, of all my musicals they screwed up, "Funny Girl" came out the best." Because the songs "My Man", "Second Hand Rose", and "I’d Rather Be Blue" frequently were performed by the real Brice during her career, they were interpolated into the Styne-Merrill score. The soundtrack album