YMMV / Funny Girl

• Awesome Music:
  • "Don't Rain on My Parade" and "People."
  • Streisand's cover of My Man certainly counts.
• Broken Base: The 2022 revival replacing Beanie Feldstein with Lea Michele (and using the latter's voice for the cast recording instead of the actual original actress) was quite controversial, with some believing it was unfair to cut Feldstein's run short (especially given Michele's own controversies at the time) and who didn't think Michele fit the role, while others defended the decision as Michele has long seen Fanny as a dream role and enjoyed her performance over Feldstein. There's a minority third option who prefer the alternate, Julie Benko, to both.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Fanny's "I Am" Song below — "I'm the greatest star, I am by far, but no one knows it" — seems to be more like Streisand's "I Am" Song in light of her later reputation.
• Hollywood Homely:
  • Barbra Streisand is supposed to be plain? (Not that she didn't have her early detractors.)
  • In a similar vein, casting Lea Michele as the "not pretty" Fanny Brice might be a stretch for some audiences to imagine.
  • The fact that Anne Bancroft was considered for the part before Streisand was cast foreshadowed that this would be a recurring theme with Fanny's actresses.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: The 2022 revival is strongly tied to the controversy surrounding its actresses, with Beanie Feldstein receiving vast negative reviews and being replaced early in her run with Lea Michele, who at the time was still overcoming her own bad media coverage surrounding past workplace misconduct. While consensus leaned in favor of Michele's performance (and her conduct backstage seemed to have improved over the years), comments tend to spiral into arguments over whether the whole ordeal was fair.
• Questionable Casting: The Broadway revival casting Beanie Feldstein as Fanny proved to be incredibly contentious. While she may be a good fit for the comic aspects of the character, many complained that she had nowhere near the vocal chops required to play the role. On the other hand, some thought she was fine in the role, and almost everyone, even those who thought she was miscast, felt she was undeserving of the mistreatment she got from the media and the higher ups involved with the show.
• Values Dissonance: Fanny's friends, and even her own mother, criticize her for Nicky's financial ruin, going so far as to blame her when he gets busted in a bonds scam. Why? Because Fanny not only dared to earn the money in the family, but she attempted to help her husband out financially when she should have been focused on helping him emotionally.

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