Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

I saw this film on its first release, then immediately bought the soundtrack album. The songs, by Lerner and Lane, still stand up. I don't think the film was very successful. Vincent Canby of the New York Times gave it a lackluster review that had little to criticize about it or its star; just vague insinuations of disappointment.Barbra Streisand had shined in "Funny Girl" and then taken a less stellar, though titular role, in "Hello Dolly!" "On a Clear Day" was the third stage-to-screen role to get the Streisand treatment. She plays a young woman, Daisy Gamble, with supernatural gifts, like premonition, telepathy and the ability to grow flowers with amazing speed. She convinces a professor to use hypnosis to cure her of her smoking habit. Yves Montand feels miscast as the academic who falls under her spell, but I have trouble thinking of a more suitable actor for the role. Robert Goulet comes to mind.As the professor works with his willing subject, she regresses to reveal an unexpected past. Thanks to Director Vincent Minelli, Streisand's exotic beauty is fully realized. Some wonderful costuming helps complete the transformation.Streisand's comedic abilities should not be overlooked. As she did in "Funny Girl" and would later do in "They Way We Were", she can combine self-deprecating humor and an unexpected beauty very convincingly.The film suffers somewhat from a weaker third act, but remains engaging. The music and Streisand's vocalizations remind us that no one else has done more to keep the musical genre alive during this era.With better editing and a few tweaks this could have been a superior film, but it is still worth seeing.

I don't believe it would be much of a spoiler alert to say that the title of the film refers to Streisand's character Daisy Gamble's extraordinary gifts for clairvoyance, ESP, past life regression as well as an uncanny ability to make her rooftop plant life grow that goes quite beyond having a mere green thumb. And she discovers these deeply- suppressed talents with the aid of Dr. Marc Chabot (Montand) who inadvertently dredges them to the surface in an effort to get her to kick an everyday commonplace nicotine habit to empress her stuffy staid fiancée whose strictly squaresville. Coming after Streisand's Oscar winning role as Fanny Brice in "Funny Girl" (a shared win with Katherine Hepburn for a "Lion in Winter" that same year of 1968) and the miserable drubbing she received from the critics for her unique interpretation of Dolly Levi in "Hello Dolly" (1969), it was hoped by all that her performance in "On a Clear Day..." would solidify her prominence as a reigning star in Hollywood. Such was not the case. Nevertheless, Streisand's dominant bubbly, effervescent personality always managed to emerge transcending her many characterizations to radiate despite the various roles she elected to appear in establishing her considerable mainstay to this very day. Nor was this Vincente Minnelli's best directorial effort who was responsible for such cinematic musical milestones in everything from "Meet Me in St. Louis"(1944) to the Oscar-winning Best Picture for 1958 "Gigi" as well as keeping his hand in as an unqualified expert dramatist with film adaptations such as "Tea and Sympathy" (1956). Still, there's still quite a bit of magic evident in this film to have made this journeyman effort on his part a bright enough light among so many musicals which lit up Broadway to justify the estimated $10,000,000 Paramount Pictures sent on "A Clear Day..." well worth anyone's while.

I'm not a big Barbra Streisand fan. I've seen a couple of her films and I never liked them, so when I watched ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER, my expectations were low. After seeing ON A CLEAR DAY, I'm still not a Streisand fan but I have to say that it's the first time I enjoyed one of her films. It's not altogether successful and some of Streisand's usual shtick was annoying from time to time.The main problem with ON A CLEAR DAY was the structure of the story. It's very uneven and because there are several different timelines, one taking place in the present, and two or three during the past, plus the myriad of songs sung by Streisand and the great Yves Montand, sometimes in different styles, the whole thing just didn't jibe. To make matters worse, the movie is filled with an endless number of incongruous ideas and themes, many of them borrowed from other musicals of the 1960s (MY FAIR LADY, CAMELOT, OLIVER, etc), or original to this musical but still conflicting with each other, like ESP, reincarnation, hypnotism, regression, multiple personalities, making plants grow faster, blackmail, court cases, death penalty, Streisand's square boyfriend, smoking, etc, none which are fully explored and with everything ending up muddled for nothing.There are even more problems with ON A CLEAR DAY. The story is never clear over what we're supposed to feel for Streisand and Montand. Are they supposed to fall in love? Were they supposed to be lovers or were they always supposed to remain platonic because of the doctor - patient relationship? Does Montand only love Melinda? Where were they going with all the conflicts between the two? The resolution of their relationship is not satisfactory at all.Then there's the whole tedious part when Montand is in trouble with the university and he might lose his job. This plot point served no purpose at all and should have been left on the cutting room's floor. And the film is painfully dated during the contemporary scenes. There was just too much going on. Like DARLING LILI, another ill-fated musical released in 1970, ON A CLEAR DAY suffers from a clear case of multiple personalities. Unlike LILI, this Streisand musical is not a disaster. It's just that the story and direction were all over the place. There was no focus and if there was a story that needed focus, it's this one. With better direction, and without the dated set-up in the contemporary scenes, this film could have been amazing. There are still nuggets of greatest to be found here and there amidst the beautiful mess. My favorite scene is the one when we hear Streisand singing "Love With All The Trimmings" while Babs, as Melinda Tentrees, flirts with the ridiculously handsome John Richardson. It's so over-the-top in it's depiction of romance novel lushness that the only thing you can do is admire this bit of nonsense. In fact, if you don't think too much about ON A CLEAR DAY and follow it for what it is, the movie is pure escapism. You're sorta whisked away into an adventure that takes place in the mind. I just wished it knew what it wanted to be and that Streisand wasn't wearing those dated & scary 1960s clothes.

This was one of the very last of the lavish screen musicals to be made in the classic mode, and, by the time of it's early 1970 theatrical release, it already seemed tired and dated. This is why it is somewhat shocking that, when viewed today, ON A CLEAR DAY is not only tremendously entertaining, but that it's also possibly the most underrated film of both director Vincent Minnelli and star Barbra Streisand. The film's reincarnation theme was pretty cutting-edge back in the early-seventies, and it still feels unique even today. The film received fair-to-negative reviews from critics at the time, and even though it proved to be a modest hit at the box office, it has been long forgotten by the general public, and it even goes unlisted on many of Streisand's selected filmographies. This is a shame, for Streisand's highly impressive dual performance may prove to be a revelation for some of her admirers and critics alike.Streisand does some of her very best screen work in the film's frequent flashbacks. Not only does she look absolutely beautiful as Melinda in Cecil DeVille's many elaborate costumes, but her Regency- era poise and accent are completely flawless. Streisand also gives one of her most likable performances as kooky Daisy (her character's present-day incarnation), and her outstanding performance(s) make the contrast between the two characters completely convincing and believable. Yves Montad is acceptable in his role - I don't believe he really deserved all of the criticism that he's received over the years, yet I do find his performance to be somewhat stiff. Having said that, though, Montad is perfectly serviceable as the skeptical hypnotist. Jack Nicholson, Bob Newhart, and John Richardson appear in small supporting roles, and, though they all feel rather underused, their appearances here are all great fun.However, there's something about the Streisand-Minnelli pairing that seems to have brought out the best in the two legendary talents. The flashback segments in particular provide the perfect showcase for Minnelli's imaginative visuals, and these are also the very scenes that allow Streisand to stretch the most as an actress. In particular, the "Love And All The Trimmings" sequence is easily one of the best moments that Minnelli ever captured on film, and Streisand has rarely been more intensely seductive than in this one sequence. Score-wise, the soaring title song is the only real classic of the eight Lenner-Lowe compositions, but a few of the others (the comic "Go To Sleep," the gorgeous "He Isn't You") are nearly as great. Bottom line: ON A CLEAR DAY is a film that's usually funny, sometimes touching, and always inventive and enjoyable. It's undervalued gem if there ever was one.