Funny Girl · reception & legacy
1968 · William Wyler
How Funny Girl has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A smash hit in 1968 — one of the year's top grossers — with all the praise aimed squarely at its debuting star; today it endures less as a Wyler film than as the definitive Streisand origin story, a fixture of the musical and gay-icon canons.
What's debated
The perennial debate: is Funny Girl actually a great movie, or a merely decent one that Barbra Streisand single-handedly drags to greatness — with the slower second half as Exhibit A?
Its footprint
"Hello, gorgeous" — the first line of Streisand's screen career — became one of the most quoted openings in movie history (she repeated it to her Oscar), and the tugboat 'Don't Rain on My Parade' sequence is endlessly referenced, from drag stages to Glee.
Where it stands
Cast-iron canon for musical lovers and Streisand devotees — the 'you must have seen this' star-is-born text, even for viewers who otherwise skip 60s roadshow musicals.