If you’re the kind of person who would love to run off to join the circus with a singing and dancing Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron, you’re in luck with the arrival of Michael Gracey’s The Greatest Showman (B+). This handsomely produced, high gloss musical adaptation of the mid-19th century life of P.T. Barnum (don’t tell them his story was already famously musicalized in 1980’s Tony winner Barnum) is highly enjoyable, especially with a mild suspension of disbelief but not much more than musicals require anyway. It’s a hybrid of Moulin Rouge! and a Disney animated film come to life and has about as much historical accuracy as that studio’s Pocahontas, but by golly, it still paints with all the colors of a win. The music of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, high off twin accolades for La La Land and Dear Evan Hansen, swirls with catchy uplift; and the choreography, while inexplicably reminiscent of a Michael Jackson video, is rousing. There’s not a lot of heavy lifting acting needed from the cast, but everyone including Jackman in the lead, Efron as his apprentice, and even Michelle Williams in the thankless part of best supporting spouse, all do well with their tightrope of tunes and trots. The themes about embracing outcasts and chasing your dreams resonate through and through. Broadway lovers will have this one on heavy rotation for years.
Tag Archives: Musical
Arty Musical “Hello Again” is an Unusual 2017 Discovery
The search for elusive love is literally operatic in Tom Gustafson’s sexy, dreamlike musical adaptation Hello Again (B+), a film that traces ten romantic vignettes across the ten decades of the twentieth century. A percussive longing possesses all the movie’s melodic segments, as does a poetic score by Michael John LaChiusa. The twin language of the film is singing and sexuality, and it is filmed in a kaleidoscope of bold colors and lovely period pastiche. The sprawling cast is uniformly brave and brazen, with standouts including Rumer Willis as a smoldering mistress who christens bathtubs and movie palaces with her prowess and T.R. Knight as a seducer extraordinaire aboard the Titanic who won’t let an iceberg stand in the way of his happy ending. Cheyenne Jackson and Audra McDonald enchant in an extended duet of the flesh as a music exec and his muse, Jenna Ushkowitz delights in a sassy naughty nurse number and Martha Plimpton holds her own amidst the array of trained vocalists in a puzzling futuristic bookend to the interlocking stories. The film is austere and may frustrate some as it riffs down rabbit holes through time periods and twisty themes to wrestle with physical love, betrayal and obsession in all of its many splendid forms. It’s an unconventional curiosity box of sights and sounds worth discovering.
“La La Land” an Enchanting Movie Musical
Damien Chazelle’s kaleidoscopic modern musical La La Land (B+) explores the eternal question of whether you should put your art or your love life first. Or maybe you can have both! OK, it’s not exactly a universal question – and possibly a first-world problem at that – but in the hands of starry-eyed and fleet-footed leads Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, they surely confront these themes with a spectacular charm offensive. After an impressive musical number atop and around cars stopped on the Los Angeles freeway (west coast Fame meets West Side Story), the film riffs into Meet Cutes and Meet-Not-So-Cutes, ups and downs and very few surprises aside from it all being a musical. Much is done in an Umbrellas of Cherbourg type leitmotif, but it doesn’t necessarily rain with consistent results. The songs are enjoyable, and Stone is luminescent in a big audition number. The Technicolor dance sequences are quite whimsical and wonderful. Gosling gets his best role yet, with the film exploiting many of his dapper deadpan assets. Stone is a radiant delight, with note-perfect expressions and game takes on a sometimes cliché ingenue part. The whole enterprise would have benefited from some zestier supporting characters and a smidgen of extra substance. Sometimes it’s a film that begs to be loved just a bit too much, but this love letter to a town where dreams are made, dashed and rehashed is overall pretty nifty to behold.
“Moana” Starts Strong
Co-directors John Clements and Ron Musker have animated quests with more Herculean tasks, drawn crooning crabs making a bigger undersea splash and created caves with greater wonders than the adventure afoot in Moana (C+), their mostly adrift Disney Polynesian epic wannabe. It’s quite enchanting to look at, at least for the first act; and newcomer Auli’i Cravalho brings lovely life to the brave and modern title character. Coupled with a goofy demigod convincingly acted and sung by Dwayne Johnson, the heroine embarks on an ill-conceived odyssey marked by listless villains, average banter and misbegotten mishaps. There’s one good song (of seven) played several times in the film, a propulsive anthem by Hamilton‘s Lin-Manuel Miranda called “How Far I’ll Go,” but alas its prescient title begs the answer “too far” or “not far enough.” The most inventive use of tattoos since Memento and a creative battalion of Mad Max style pirate ships cannot lift the story to the gravitas to which it sometimes aspires. Bogged down in bluster and with story conceits which fail to differentiate it in the Disney kingdom canon, the film is barely better than its makers’ Treasure Planet and The Great Mouse Detective. The co-directors have found unexpected box office success but might have been better off leaving this journey in the bottle.
“London Road” a Fascinating New Form
Rufus Norris’ adaptation of the West End musical London Road (B) is a curious case of hybrid musical documentary. This syncopation of vérité verse attends the tale of the plainspoken citizens of Ipswich, England, changed forever in 2006 by a quintet of killings of prostitutes who had emerged as curbside phantoms on the scene of a benignly neglected, sleepy borough. Actresses Olivia Colman and Anita Dobson lead an ensemble of sturdy players who brilliantly sing-speak the actual lines of a forensic investigation and subsequent media coverage of the aftermath of the murders, bringing humanity to the random viciousness befalling domestic tranquility. Even Tom Hardy, the most internationally recognized star in the film, has a nice singing bit as a roguish taxi driver tossing out conspiracy theories. Through the vocals of the victimized women living on the margins of town, we learn a little about the irony of a neighborhood watch wary for certain infractions and blind to a city’s most aching needs. Despite the chilling subject matter, there’s an overriding spirit of nihilistic dark comic glee that the filmmakers are having such a good time reinventing how a musical can take shape. Although recorded live, the dulcet dialogue has a delightful dubsmash quality with “ums” and “you knows” treated like they’re the angelic utterances of Jackie Evancho. The asymmetrical, casual quality of the music recalls Dancer in the Dark or Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and makes this essential viewing for fanatics of the musical form in its perpetual evolution or of droll, defiant British storytelling. The narrative sometimes yearns to break forth a bit more from its mumblecore melodies and doesn’t really ever make that leap. It would have been interesting to see how an Alan Parker or Ken Russell would have dabbled with more forceful visual panache into this subject matter. As it stands, Norris has challenges honing in on the exact plum protagonists most worthy of our attention. And the procedural story isn’t quite shocking or special enough to warrant this passionate a cinematic treatment. Still, this unconventional yarn is a thrilling detour from traditional storytelling.
“Pitch Perfect 2” Brings On the Sonic Sisterhood
Furious 7 delivered a winning formula earlier this spring: a diverse, likable ensemble with over-the-top automotive stunts and even a bit of nostalgia. Replace race cars with riffs, and you have the imminently pleasing aca-comedy sequel Pitch Perfect 2 (B+), sure to please the franchise faithful. Elizabeth Banks, who repeats her funny gig as a wry music contest commentator, takes the helm as director of PP2, and she orchestrates a creative bumper-crop of pranks, pratfalls, life lessons and female empowerment. Anna Kendrick gets a smart subplot working for a music producer (masterfully played by Keegan-Michael Key) while Hailee Steinfeld skillfully assumes the ingenue role. Rebel Wilson and Adam DeVine bring ample comic relief from the frantic quest to restore the Bellas’ good names after a wardrobe malfunction causes global pandemonium. Several sequences are mild misfires, but mostly it’s a summer camp-fest of fun and surprises. There’s music and one-liners aplenty to keep this pop bonbon sweet and sassy. The script’s respect for the female ensemble and for music itself is admirable. It’s a rollicking ride that at times surpasses the original film’s cult success and is certainly bound for box office glory.
“Last Five Years” Makes a Magnificent Musical Movie
In music and in life, synching up is half the battle. For the two lovers orbiting and intersecting with each other through Richard LaGravenese’s adaptation of the Jason Robert Brown musical The Last Five Years (A), the language of tough love is song, and the deck is shuffled with her story told backward and his forward. The “he” is Jeremy Jordan, and the “she” is Anna Kendrick, and both are in spectacular voice and game for the virtually all-sung emoting. Kendrick’s struggling actress character draws from the actress’ considerable charms and everywoman humor. Jordan is also stunning in his debonair dismissiveness as an on-the-rise novelist whose fame is ablaze just as Kendrick’s character crashes and burns. With hand-held aesthetic and its cunning chronology, it’s a bit like Once meets Memento, with shades of young love out of the Before Sunrise playbook and a found footage quality à la Blair Witch. There’s something else afoot here: a giddiness teetering to melancholy and an overarching uncertainty about where it’s all headed. It does seem clear from the opening sequence that the titular timeline doesn’t end well for the couple, but in still life and snapshots within the various montages, there’s enduring hope. A breezy indie spirit imbues the affair with a veritable home movie quality, with the audience a voyeur to a relationship always on the brink. LaGravenese is scrappy and uncommon in his approach, which rewrites many of the rules of the genre. Naturalistic and unexpectedly moving, it’s a marvel of a musical.
The film’s co-star talks to TheaterMania about the film adaptation of the cult stage musical:
“Into the Woods” Skims Surface of Sondheim
Rob Marshall’s film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical Into the Woods (B) is quite faithful in spirit to its fractured fairy tale source material, but the director fails to truly plumb the emotional resonance of its “beyond happily ever after” themes. The film involves a quest that brings together intersecting storybook characters; and although often episodic, it works best when a thematic through-line is evident. Emily Blunt, fresh off her triumph in Edge of Tomorrow, is the breakout musical star here as the baker’s wife on a journey to break a spell that prevents her from having a child. Portraying a lowkey and indecisive Cinderella, Anna Kendrick is also a delight. As the witch, Meryl Streep gets the songs right, but her performance could have used some tighter intentions. I blame that as well on Marshall: you have to edit pretty poorly to put Miss Streep in a bad light. The music numbers including “Agony” and “No One is Alone” and some humorous throwaway bits are highlights (Chris Pine is the male standout as a vain prince). The effects and the drab, monotonous look and feel of much of the film’s second half are drawbacks (No, Rob, shaking the camera is not equivalent to directing an action sequence). The piece famously changes tone midway, and Marshall isn’t quite up to the challenge of sustaining the momentum properly. Not as good or inventive as his Chicago but certainly more cogent than his Nine, this musical adaptation is straightforward but lacks the ambition that might have made it an instant classic.
Hard Critical Knocks for 2014 “Annie”
When film industry legend John Huston made the durable 1982 adaptation of the Broadway musical Annie, he was accused of making a bit too literal and lumbering an entertainment, but fans should likely accept Huston’s creation or Rob Marshall’s 1999 TV re-do as an authoritative version. Will Gluck’s 2014 remake of Annie (C-) starring Quvenzhané Wallis is a beast of a wild card, a modern-day remix of the former Depression-era tale told to an auto-tuned pop beat with basically the same structure as past incarnations but very little of the faithfulness to legitimate song and dance craft. The model here is strictly in the High School Musical quality zone; and only because of the paucity of films in the musical genre is it worth an analysis. Writer/director Gluck, who made the amusing Easy A, isn’t without talent in terms of comedy and sentimentality, but he throws in too many zany elements from smart-home technology to convoluted subplots and too much flash and half-baked jokes when he should really be tightening a bloated story and giving some of those musical numbers a bit more buoyancy. A few mild gross-out gags and inconsistent characters distract from the moments that do actually spark. As the millionaire who takes in the plucky foster child, Jamie Foxx improves in his performance as the film rolls on, ultimately finding some soul in the role. Ditto for Cameron Diaz, whose acting at first seems from another planet: she too gets better as her boozy Miss Hannigan finds her way through the uneven film’s labyrinth. Wallis is largely charming and even gets her own new song, “Opportunity” by pop writer Sia, that adds to chestnuts such as “Tomorrow” and “Hard Knock Life.” The lip-synching and dancing are sloppy and the pace sometimes lugubrious, but overall the positive family vibe eclipses the misfire moments. For every dreadful performance (Bobby Cannavale), there’s a good one (Rose Byrne). For every montage miss, there’s a stirring song. It’s equal parts ashtrays and art, but in a world with few joyful enterprises, perhaps this new deal for Christmas that marches to its own drummer can also pass for an adaptation of this family favorite.
“Jersey Boys” Movie the Ultimate Behind the Music
As a director, Clint Eastwood is generally occupied with contemplative exploration of emotion and nuance, often told in a jazzy lower key (think Bridges of Madison County, Million Dollar Baby or Flags of Our Fathers), which makes him an odd choice to helm the adaptation of the long-running Broadway crowd pleaser Jersey Boys. But in peeling back the bombastic stand-up-and-dance qualities that made the live musical so popular and mining the biopic for its nerve center, he has fashioned an effective cinematic adaptation (B+) that explores the ups and downs of music making, the bounds of loyalty and the exuberance of a splendid time and place. The popular music is still there and serves the story, but Eastwood trusts an almost reverse “inside voice” instinct in spotlighting the Rashomon-like account of how the individual members of The Four Seasons rose from shady petty crime origins to chart toppers. John Lloyd Young is effective as Frankie Valli, the heart of the piece. His character battles demons and heartbreak that give growing gravitas to his distinctive angel voice. Vincent Piazza is also strong as the tough guy with mob roots who takes the band to the brink. The period detail and art direction in a near-sepia that emphasizes tones of silver, is gorgeous in its retro muted effect, like you’re waltzing into a Whurlitzer. The melodrama is sometimes laid on thick, as is the old-age makeup (Clint, did you learn nothing from J. Edgar?). And the narrative wraps up a little too tidy with what feels like a closing credits music video tacked on with a completely different and more buoyant mood than the preceding film. Still, it’s recommended for folks who enjoy how art is put together, how relationships withstand adversity and how songs become a sensation. Much more a film with incidental music than a “Capital-M Musical!,” it’s nonetheless absorbing and awakens unexpected senses.
“Frozen” Works in Spurts
Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee’s animated Disney movie Frozen (B+) mixes up the princess formula with some unexpected twists and largely enchanting results. This Scandanavian storybook adventure is filled with fresh ice effects, compelling heroines, charming sidekicks and winning songs by Kristen and Bobby Lopez. Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel’s power ballads and a snowman’s serenade to sunny climates – by Book of Mormon‘s Josh Gad – are among the highlights.
Musical Movie “Les Misérables” is an Intimate Story Against Sprawling Landscape
As a movie musical, Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables (A) gets nearly every sonic and emotional note right. Hugh Jackman, Eddie Redmayne and Anne Hathaway are the standout performers in this silver scall-singing spectacular that toggles between moments both intimate and epic. Fans of the theatrical show will have a lot to love, and the modest revisions nearly all serve to clarify the story in its cinematic translation. Themes of rebellion and redemption ring true through the urchins, anthems, baritones and barricades of a gangbuster movie musical.