But when The Sound of Music was first released, not everyone was impressed. The film did win a number of kind reviews, but there were some notable critics who weren't swayed. Pauline Kael said, "We have been turned into emotional and aesthetic imbeciles when we hear ourselves humming the sickly, goody-goody songs" (via Salon). And as it turns out, one of the film's very stars agreed with her: Captain Von Trapp himself.
Plummer was known to call the movie "S&M" or "The Sound of Mucus." In 1982, he told People, "That sentimental stuff is the most difficult for me to play, especially because I'm trained vocally and physically for Shakespeare," and, "To do a lousy part like von Trapp, you have to use every trick you know to fill the empty carcass of the role. That damn movie follows me around like an albatross" (via The New York Times).
And it would appear as though this attitude towards the film stayed with Plummer in the decades to come. In 2011, he told The Hollywood Reporter that the role of Captain von Trapp was the toughest he'd ever played because "it was so awful and sentimental and gooey. You had to work terribly hard to try and infuse some miniscule bit of humor into it." One good thing to come out of the experience for Plummer? A 50-year friendship with co-star Julie Andrews (via Vanity Fair) — not to mention, of course, the money and fame.
