YMMV / South Pacific

• Anvilicious: "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" is about as subtle about its anti-racism message as a brick through a window. Rodgers and Hammerstein were once asked by some Southerners to cut it for being too on the nose, and retorted that "If you cut that song, you cut the whole musical."
• Awesome Music: Well, it is Rodgers and Hammerstein after all.
  • "This Nearly Was Mine" is an absolutely brilliant and heartbreaking solo for Emile. Bonus points for Brian Stokes Mitchell’s emotional charged rendition.
• Covered Up: Captain Sensible's Synth-Pop cover of "Happy Talk" made it to #1 in the UK charts.
• Fair for Its Day: While it's true that Bloody Mary and her daughter are ethnic stereotypes, the fact that neither of them is a Yellow Peril villain makes this progressive for the time it was written. Plus the overall message of racial tolerance.
• Narm
  • The extensive overuse of color filters ruins the mood of several scenes.
  • Emile basically sings "Some Enchanted Evening" directly into Nellie's ear, including the loudest dramatic notes at the end.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Or offstage moment, depending on which version you watch. When Cable refuses to marry Liat, her mother Bloody Mary tells him that Liat will marry the French planter Jacques Barriere, a known drunkard who's been angling for her hand, instead, and drags her off. The next time we see Liat, it's just after Cable's death has been announced, and Mary and Liat come upon Nellie who's worried that Emile will meet the same fate. Mary tells Nellie that Liat has refused to marry anyone but Joe Cable. Apparently, there was a moment offstage where the usually rather passive Liat has put her foot down and asserted herself...and we never got to see it.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Some movie and trivia sites claim that Sean Connery has a minor role in the film. Connery did appear in the chorus of the London stage production of the show (his first acting gig) in 1954, but he was not cast in the movie version.
• Special Effect Failure: The use of blue and violet color filters for scenes set at night only make it more obvious that the cast didn't really perform them at nighttime. It looks especially jarring during "Honey Bun", which uses the color filters for Reaction Shots, but natural colors for the show itself.
  • The red filter during "Bali Hai" makes Bloody Mary look literally drenched in blood. She's supposed to be singing about a mystical paradise, but the bright red is more appropriate for singing about hell!
  • At points in "Some Enchanted Evening" the yellow filter is so jarring that it almost looks like someone urinated on the print.
• Tearjerker: Nellie over hearing on the radio when Emile reports that Lt. Cable has died in combat, before going to static, horrified at the death of her friend and possibly the death of the man she loves runs off on the beach begging the heavens and Emile that he come home to her. Just then Bloody Mary and Liat arrive, asking for Joe.
  Bloody Mary: Miss...
  Nellie: Who are you?
  Mary: I am mother of Liat, she says she will marry no one but Lt. Cable.
  Nellie: Lt. Cable. (overcome with emotion, embracing Liat) Oh my darling!

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