Andrea Compton I could not decide while watching this movie if I was going to like it or if I was going to have to turn it off haha. I usually give movies at least 25 minutes to persuade me to keep watching it. I pushed stop on this one. It was not terrible, just not for me. I felt it dragged a little bit, and the time on the movie is over 2 hours so I thought I cannot sit and feel dragged through this movie for 2 hours haha. Oh well.

fshepinc When it was first released, the film was not a box office success. To be fair, though, the studio butchered the film after its debut -cutting more than 40 minutes, including one complete song and parts of several others. Based on the award-winning musical play, 1776 is one of the best-written musicals of all time. Watching the restored director's cut is an entirely different experience from what most people saw in their movie theater.The script humanizes and characterizes the founding fathers in a way never seen before, and seldom seen since. Much of the dialogue is taken directly from the letters and speeches of the characters (written before, during, and after the revolution). There are a few historical inaccuracies and embellishments, but the film by and large tells the true, and often unknown, story of how the Declaration of Independence came to be written.The score, by former history teacher and sometime-popular-songwriter Sherman Edwards is delightful. Contrary to some of the reviews posted here, there are several stand-out songs, including "Yours, Yours, Yours", "He Plays the Violin", and "Momma, Look Sharp". The score and orchestrations evoke the musical styles of the period, and provide a lot of the film's humor. 1776 holds an odd record in the theater world: the longest space of time between musical numbers (over 30 minutes). Some critics have suggested that the show should have been a straight play, rather than a musical, but the songs serve to lighten the mood and energize the storytelling, It would be a lesser show if they were -as evidenced by the very different audience reaction to the highly-edited release version where much of the music was cut. Sadly, the film's soundtrack album was horribly botched, with heavy reverb added to the mix, and has never been available on CD or in digital format. An expanded, remastered release is possible with the remaining sound elements, but not deemed commercial enough to warrant the expense.The cast is uniformly excellent, drawn almost entirely from the original and later Broadway and touring casts of the long-running hit. This is one of the very few times Hollywood allowed most of the principal cast of a Broadway show to preserve their performances on film. William Daniels owns the role of John Adams as few actors have ever owned a role. His scenes with Virginia Vestoff (Abigail Adams) are among the most beautiful and touching ever filmed. Howard DaSilva's Ben Franklin provides a great deal of common sense along with the comedy. He nearly wasn't allowed to do the film, but we are fortunate that he finally got to preserve his wonderful performance. (He had a mild heart attack during the Broadway previews and missed the opening night. Contractually, his understudy, Rex Everhart, got to record the original cast album, while DaSilva actually performed the role during the Broadway run.It is amazing that the film was ever made. 1776 was a virtually all-male musical (there are only two female roles) about history and politics, made at a time when traditional musical films were box-office poison. It had no big names, and no popular song hits. Jack L. Warner is often excoriated for cutting "Cool, Considerate Men", when really he should be lauded for preserving a classic American musical in what must be considered the most faithful film adaptation ever made.

David S. Several highly reputable web sites (eg Netflix) falsely state that the musical "1776" (upon which this film is based) won a Pulitzer: https://dvd.netflix.com/Search?oq=&ac_posn=&search_submit=&v1=1776 https://www.overstock.com/Books-Movies-Music-Games/1776-Blu-ray- Disc/9967177/product.html I am quite familiar with the Pulitzer canon and I can assure you it did NOT! I have no idea how this false idea got started, but the truth is easy to find. The complete list of Pulitzer winners with "1776" in the title can be found here: http://www.pulitzer.org/search/1776 As of 2017 there are exactly three matches and the musical "1776" is NOT one of them. I would appreciate any useful information on how to pursue correcting this misinformation on Netflix and other sites.

Rob Starzec I think this story would be better fitted for a 2 hour drama, but the drama within this musical is still good and holds up the film nicely. I wasn't sure if I would be bothered by the fact that it is a musical, but honestly there wasn't as much music as I expected anyway, and I only thought one or two songs were unnecessary.In my opinion this film doesn't seem overly long even though it is a 2 hour 45 minute film. In fact, the best scenes in the film are the long, dramatic debates which the characters have with each other inside the Congress building. It keeps the film very enticing and questions ethics instead of just explaining how the Declaration came to be.The character of Benjamin Franklin is surprisingly very funny in this film. At one point, he even seems to make a phallic reference which I never thought would be part of the content for this film - but then again Shakespeare had hidden sexual jokes in his plays as well, and that was centuries before movies were made.One part of a scene that could have been omitted from the film in my opinion is when one of the colonies wants Jefferson's mention of slavery removed from the declaration. Since this movie was about America declaring their independence, this didn't seem to be a crucial part of the story, but this movie was highly about ethics so I suppose the filmmakers thought it was in the film's best interest to include this short debate.This is one of my new favorite "patriotic" movies, and I'll probably be watching it again around this time next year along with Yankee Doodle Dandy.