Fiddler On The Roof review

The passage of time has not been kind to this schmaltzy three-hour film version of the smash Broadway musical. Reissued for its 30th anniversary, it's a model of how not to adapt a stage show for the big screen.

Israeli singer Topol is Tevye, the Jewish milkman living in a small village in pre-revolutionary Ukraine. A believer in the old ways, he plans to marry off his three daughters. However each of his children decide to follow their own hearts.

There's something patronising about the way Norman Jewison portrays all these poor but cheerful Yiddish types. The choreography is clumsy, the acting caricatured, and the songs themselves painfully overblown.