With Song-Like Tread…

Musicals are a tricky genre. If you’re not careful, you’ll find something so saccharine it makes you sick, or songs so offensive you’ll cringe to the beat. However, then you’ll get something amazing, thrilling, or just so catchy you can’t escape. Then, it’s all worth it, and you don’t mind the hours spent listening to the duds.

An obvious, newer example of awesome is “Moulin Rouge”. The songs are classic, inspired, colorful, and sung by popular actors. It’s silly, romantic, and honestly, been rewritten a thousand ways. A more interesting, if older example is the “Pirates of Penzance”. It’s a rip-roaring expanse of Kevin Kline preening, Angela Lansbury prying, and a couple of pop-stars pretending to be actors. The songs, by Gilbert and Sullivan, are entertaining, lively, and effective when you need something to sing as you walk in a large group down a street at night.

Now, “the Sound of Music” is fun and a sentimental favorite, but it can turn people away (Rex Harrison, for instance, hated the movie with a passion). “Mamma Mia” is polarizing—some people love disco, and some people don’t know a good thing when they hear it. “Across the Universe” was such a good idea, but lacked the ability to take it anywhere beyond a middle school history project.

Modern “Rent” and classic “Fiddler on the Roof” are well done but huge downers. “Grease”, “Meet Me in St. Louis” and “Hair” are dated, despite being period pieces and thereby movies that should be exempt from being dated (not that it makes me like “Hair” any less). “Singing in the Rain” is cute, but learn a few of the songs and you could easily become the most annoying person in the world. “West Side Story” has, need I say it, been done before. “Chicago” was chipper, sleek and shiny, and I would actually recommend that one. Huh.

For something fun and different, you could try “Yankee Doodle Dandy” which contains an exuberant James Cagney dancing his feet off, singing his heart out, and making you think “Tom Powers who?” (which you might be thinking already). Another interesting take is Frank Sinatra in “On the Town”—despite the fact that he was a singer, it still makes me laugh to see him dancing around New York City in a sailor suit like a character from “Glee”.

“Mary Poppins” is practically perfect in every way, except for that unresolved chemistry between Poppins and the chimneysweep;“Oklahoma” is sweet and corn-fed. “Phantom of the Opera” can be electric if done well, and “Aida” will be amazing if they ever get around to it. I’ve never liked “Carousel” or “South Pacific”, although I’m sure they have their merits, and there are so many more musicals I have yet to see.

So where has this random list and vague opining of musical film brought us? It has brought us to the dredges, the depths, the Disney.

Now, I like some Disney (and Disney-esque) movies, and I feel there is some positive effect from most music and telling stories. However, I will briefly rip into a few choice mistakes. “Pocahontas” and “Anastasia” take the lives of real people, scribbles over them with pretty pictures and catchy tunes, and pretends to be taking you on an adventure. Really, though, they’re leading millions of children into believing that they are what really happened, and insulting the real people they pretend to be about. They are about as lazily, insipidly creative as Philippa Gregory and her armies of Tudor lies, and they all hold hands and sing charmingly as they stupefy the nation. Then we have “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”, “the Little Mermaid”, and about half the stories Disney has retold in cartoon form. Here, they rewrite classics to make them cute and appealing, thereby removing much of what made the stories fascinating to begin with. Why… why?!

At any rate, that’s my take on movie musicals. At least, that’s as organized I can be two days before a move. Hopefully, if you’ve taken anything away from this, it’s that Jimmy Cagney is a bully song and dance man, Kevin Kline is the fellow to see, Disney makes rum films, and disco is back!