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I came very VERY close to turning this off after the first 10 min. But Michelle Pfeiffer surely will turn this around. Sadly no. What is supposed to be a Joyful Christmas movie is really a 108 min pity party. Oh poor Mom: she has to do it all and no one realizes just what she does. Alas!! God, you signed up for it woman - you made your family what they are: oldest daughter on her own trip as an untalented writer. Married to a king bore that looks an awful lot like Adam Sandler in that god awful LITTLE NICKY - positively creepy.

Middle son with a peter pan syndrome and mama babies her "little boy". (How did he ever get a gf with no job and living off her for a year???) Youngest daughter with the worst hairdo thats so bad-the hairdo literally takes away from the girls performance (who was that anyway?) oh and btw, she's also a lesbian.

The snooty asian neighbors across the street.

All the characters are 1 dimensional cutouts from every cheesy Christmas movie ever made. Actually one better: the christmas movies on the Hallmark channel are better constructed than this drivel. Actually the problem lies with the untalented script selectors at AMAZON/MGM - this script reeks of a minimum wage employee. It ended up on Prime - not because they produced it -- more likely because no one else wanted it. In the end, the best thing to say is that "Thank God Michelle got paid for this; she looks good in this; BUT she surely didn't do this piece of trash for any other reason than the money." A waste of 108 min.

It's a pretty decent flick. Especially when you go out and read some of the behind the scene information available - it's amazing how it made it to the screen. Charleton Heston IS Charleton Heston: he's like John Wayne => he plays himself in every picture. David Niven is his proper self. Ava Gardner is beautiful BUT her performance off screen was more of an issue than what she put on-screen. This is the picture that made Heston avoid working with Gardner again until EARTHQUAKE in the 70's. Yet the picture is fun and all the money that was spent is pretty much on the screen.

A couple of items: 1. Elizabeth Sellers who played Niven's wife in the film is a beautiful woman: more attractive than Gardner yet her career is not as prolific as I would have thought.

2. I would have loved to seen this film in the original SuperTechnirama 70MM version => even more gorgeous than the 35mm version.

If you have to start a review that way and you rate over 3, then the reviewer isn't much of a critic. I watched NORWAY again last night. I've seen it when originally released in theatres, bought the DVD in a moment of weakness and watched it a 3rd time last night. It was conceived after the rash of 60's roadshow musicals but the production took forever to get moving. Too bad it did. Let's look at the good pieces to the film: 1. The cinematography is breathtaking when you see the fields of flowers, the waterfalls, the snow and ice, the fjords; truly good cinematography. 2. Musical score. The score as performed and recorded is dynamic and powerful. 3. Film editing: for what the editor had to work with, he did a tremendous job. Now lets talk about the weak points: 1. STORY. Unless you're a musician that plays Grieg on a fairly regular basis, you need a powerful story to hold the audience. This is missing. The story that came out (at least this is what I thought) was the love triangle between girl #1 Murstad and Henderson. But, you saw no passion or a hint of love so the story gets lost in the sets. 2. STARS, outside of Henderson, Robinson, and Morley, the rest of the cast is largely unknown-not a detriment if they could act. Henderson does what she can, but her role doesn't lend itself to any powerful scenes. 3. MUSIC. For a musical this film, 1. It has no song that is memorable 2. Has no huge production number 3. Lead actor has no singing voice. Probably would have made a better straight drama. 4. Editing. Unfortunately for it being one of the better parts of the film, it still needs editing. Sad, but if the editor would have been just, this film would have ended up a two reeler short subject. 5. SCREENPLAY. As I said the story is ambiguous, the screenplay is just BORING. By the end of the film, you just don't care what happens to the principles that you watched for 2 1/2 hours - you just want to run run run or take a boat down the fjord to get away with it. I would like to blame all the people involved for this being the film it is, but this really falls on 2 shoulders: Andrew and Virginia Stone. They were the people involved in keeping the talent together and coordinated: they should have pushed harder. Stone went on to create one more film after this: THE GREAT WALTZ - another boxoffice-blunder.