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Parents' Guide to

Funny Face

By Charles Cassady Jr., Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 9+

Bubbly, fashion-crazed Hepburn-Astaire musical.

Movie NR 1957 103 minutes
Funny Face Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Community Reviews

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age 2+

Based on 2 parent reviews

ReadingQueen92
ReadingQueen92 Adult
June 6, 2020
age 2+

Appropriate for Everybody

A delightful film. Rightly deserves its reputation as a classic. Features the outstanding Audrey Hepburn and talented Fred Astaire, in what is their only film together. It has everything needed to keep you on the edge of your seat, wanting to find out what's around the next corner. Everyone should watch this movie at least once in their life. Has nothing more intimate than simple kisses, and is easy to grasp. Does show smoking, like all movies of the era, and has some very minor characters that will smile and nod at anything for a bottle of wine, however these instances are very brief and do not draw attention to themselves. Can be shown to any age without worry about being a bad influence.

This title has:

Too much consumerism
MYTN
MYTN Adult
December 27, 2011
age 2+

Old Fashioned and Fun

This is an easily digestible, fun, gorgeously shot, and more-intelligent-than-it-should-be kind of musical. It is the perfect movie to put you in a good mood. This helps with Hepburn's charm, Astaire's presence, and Kay Thompson's sardonic wit. However, when Astaire and Hepburn first meet, Astaire randomly kisses her without any warnings, which my girlfriend noted, "That's sexual harassment!" and I do agree with this site's review that there is a very old fashioned view of gender roles in this film. PS- Not to be a Negative Nancy, but there's something kind of "white suburban parent pipedream" about this website's review; just the thought that one will discuss Sartre and Derrida with your 9-year-old kid strikes me as delusionally high-brow. I imagine after watching this movie you had your kids read through The Second Sex and write a dissertation about gender performativity...
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What's the Story?

At a glossy NYC fashion magazine called Quality, domineering editor Maggie (Kay Thompson) seeks the next big sensation, an ultimate model to be dubbed the "Quality Woman." Maggie's especially disenchanted that all the pretty models being shot by her ace photographer Dick Avery (Fred Astaire) are pretty dumb as well. In a Greenwich Village book store, Avery becomes transfixed with shopgirl Jo (Audrey Hepburn), a bespectacled "beatnik" intellectual, immersed in philosophy -- especially some new brand of thought called "Empathicalism." Dick talks Jo into modeling for him, making her offbeat appeal a success. For Jo's public debut as the "Quality Woman," they fly to Paris for fashion shoots (and on-location musical numbers derived from Gershwin tunes). In the process Jo and Dick fall in love, but Jo is an unreliable supermodel; she's mainly gone along for the opportunity to meet great French thinkers, especially the one who invented Empathicalism.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (2 ):
Kids say (10 ):

FUNNY FACE is a bubbly, brilliantly colored but rather superficial old-school Hollywood musical. Compared with the same director's earlier masterpiece Singin' in the Rain it's a great-looking bonbon that leaves a sort of funny taste, if you ponder it too hard (which one shouldn't). The script takes satirical jabs at the fashion world's shallow superficiality, especially in the opening "Think Pink" song-and-dance number. But it also parodies the rebellion against 1950s consumer society embraced by the "beat generation," and their jazz tunes, coffeehouse concerts, and nonconformists.

So are the filmmakers in favor of anything? Yes, romance, and a very patriarchal one at that. Song-and-dance man Fred Astaire looks more like a dad than boyfriend to the magical Audrey Hepburn, and their romance feels like protective father-daughter stuff rather than real passion. None of these characters are given a history except Jo, a cloistered thinker meant to be an ugly-duckling (never mind the starlet's luminous looks). It's a little disconcerting the movie dismisses her deep thinking as a silly quirk, symbolized when Hepburn does weird, angular modern dance steps, in contrast to Astaire's graceful soft-shoe routines.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about the attitudes. Would you call this film sexist? How has the fashion scene changed (or not changed?) since Funny Face was made? While the script's "empathicalism" is a made-up philosophy, you can talk about existentialism and Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, and other French star philosophers, right down to today's Bernard-Henri Levy (married to movie-actress bombshell) who commands much media attention.

Movie Details

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