Richard Kiley is a pilot who is fed up with earthly literalness and takes to the sky. His airplane conks out and he lands in the middle of the Sahara desert. An oddly dressed little boy, Steven Warner, appears out of nowhere and has a fairy-tale conversation with the pilot about a far away planet that is so small you can walk around it in a few minutes. The songs are by Lerner and Loewe, about whom I've never thought much, but they're not nearly as bathetic as Rogers and Hammerstein who, flinging dignity to the winds, could bring themselves to write a simile in "The Sound of Music" as revolting as this -- "Like a lark who is learning to pray." I like Richard Kiley a lot. He's a decent actor, whether in an heroic role ("Phoenix City Story") or whether he's the kind of Commie villain who would blow off Thelma Ritter's poor gray head ("Pickup On South Street.") He's recited poetry for PBS. He can sing too, as he did in "Man Of La Mancha" on Broadway, and as he does here.The little kid, Warner, I had to wrestle with, a little. Most children in movies should be left out of the movies. Big nuisances for the most part, cherubic and loathsome. But Warner clears the bar -- barely. His piping Brit voice sounds a little clotted and his big puffy blue eyes suggest somebody just coming down from battery acid, but he'll pass.As for the rest of the cast -- well, WHAT a cast it is! The third person we're introduced to is Donna McKechney who plays a beautiful rose. Mighty like a rose or not, you ought to see her dance, which you can do on YouTube. You'll have an acute infraction of the myoculinary just watching her.Anyway, the kid tells Kiley the story of his leaving his little planet and traveling to others where he meets diverse inhabitants, all of them silly, and all their professions mildly skewered by Warner's simple questions. To a king: "What are borders for?" And the nonsensical replies, as from a historian on another planet: "I make things up. That's my profession." And from a soldier: "You want to know what life's all about? Dying -- that's what life's all about." The roles are taken by respected performers like Joss Ackland, Victor Spinetti, and Graham Crowden. Stevens finally winds up on earth.Kiley is desperately trying to fix the engine of his airplane but Stevens drags him away in search of an oasis, through a phantasmic desert landscape littered with the intact skeletons of giant fish and ruined trunks of palm trees. Of course they find water, and the kid tells the story of meeting a snake, a boa constrictor, scientific name Boa constrictor -- Bob Fosse, derby and all, in the wittiest and most entertaining number in the film. Fosse does a moon walk avant la lettre. Later, Gene Wilder shows up as a fox.I don't think I'll give away the ending. It's sentimental, naturally, but not as touching as Judy Garland's exit from Oz.The most suitable sort of adults will find this as touching and innocent as the children, who are likely to get a big kick out of it, if their taste for fairy tales hasn't been warped by computer-generated monsters ripping each other's heads off.

The Little Prince which released in 1974 is a rare and beautiful gem. So artfully rendered that modern audiences tend to miss it (based on IMDb replies). The beauty of the tale is not lost (for those who have read the novella), but is the core from which nearly all of the performances spring. The casting is perfect! See it for yourself. The script holds tightly to the novella. Perhaps a little too tightly, as in the case of the planet hopping. But, of course, in 1974 computer graphics were mere dreams. From an intellectual standpoint this is one of the beautiful gems that will endure, not only in spite of the fact that the main message is subliminal but possibly BECAUSE the main message is subliminal. That being said, there is yet another gem of the story that is whispered for those who will never find the subliminal gem. *No spoilers. Furthermore, for those who seek only to be entertained by films there is also symbolic gratuitous sex. Certainly even that audience can see the age of the little prince bespeaks his complete innocence. This movie - in spite of the tedious planet visitation scenes (they are necessary to the beginning of every trip)- is one I have watched several times and always get more from it.

This gets 5 stars for pretty good special effects and nice production values. (Director Stanley Donen probably got practice for these pre-CGI effects by directing Fred Astaire dance up the walls in "Royal Wedding")For the rest of it: How can a musical by Lerner & Loewe ("My Fair Lady", "Gigi", "Camelot", "Brigadoon", etc.) directed by Stanley Donen ("Singing in the Rain", "Bedazzled", "Charade", etc.) go wrong, especially if it features a small but notable cast that includes guest shots by Bob Fosse and Gene Wilder? Quite easily, actually.Perhaps part of the problem is the source material. The young adult book THE LITTLE PRINCE is a sweet but didactic tome. Lerner, arguably the best lyric writer of his time (a time including Oscar Hammerstein III) was also a slow and lazy worker. He was also known for filling his body with large amounts of chemicals. He always had a problem with structure and always did better work when he started with good source material ("Pygmalion"/"My Fair Lady").THE LITTLE PRINCE has an episodic structure. One would think Lerner would leap at the opportunity to present songs in different worlds, with characters having such various points of view.Instead, the bulk of the songs are given to the aviator character by Richard Kiley (notable exceptions are Fosse and Wilder). Lerner alters the character of the King and changes the Geographer into an Historian (rendering the character senseless). He drops other promising figures, adds a General to the mix, and makes the whole story even more doctrinaire than the original.Clive Revill and Victor Spinetti do superb jobs in shamefully short roles, as the Businessman and the Historian, respectively. They do not have unique songs. As they are photographed in exactly the same way (through some weird fish-eye lens -- I'm no photographer so I don't know a more precise term), their characters are not distinctive. One may be forgiven for thinking they're on the same world and might be related.In slightly longer roles, Bob Fosse and Gene Wilder have unique songs, and also interesting settings. Both play animals. Fosse is the Snake and he has a sinuous dance that might be beautiful if it weren't shown in bits and pieces (there is also a real snake and it plays a large part in the movie for all you Ophidiophobics -- including me). Wilder is the Fox and he's fairly typical early Wilder. But they're lost in the whole of the movie.And Stanley Donen? Lest we forget, he also directed "Blame it on Rio." To be fair, he apparently helmed only one movie between 1967's "Bedazzled" and 1974's "Little Prince." He may have been rusty.The main problem here is Lerner. Loewe's music is good in his last outing with Lerner, even if the tunes lack his typical hummability. Lerner's lyrics lack his clever wordplay. They're repetitive, redundant (those two words in juxtaposition give you some idea of what the lyrics are like) and lackluster. The actors do their best. Richard Kiley is a strong anchor for the show as a whole. But "The Little Prince" leaves one unsatisfied.

This is an exceptional movie, absolutely true to the spirit of Saint-Exupery's book; the actors are perfect - Richard Kiley, Bob Fosse and Gene Wilder are superb - and the songs fit beautifully into the film.