Tag Archives: musicals

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Holiday Season of the Witch

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Wicked

by George Wolf

Even if you’re only a little familiar with Wicked musical, you might know how part one of the long-awaited film adaptation is going to end. Yes, the closer reaches goosebump level, but director Jon M. Chu and some impeccable casting keeps all 2 hours and 40 minutes flying pretty high.

2021’s In the Heights proved Chu knew his way around a musical sequence, and the first hour of Wicked finds Chu honoring the material’s stage roots while bringing movement, space and cinematic flair to the introductory numbers.

“The Wizard and I” uses a changing color palette to underscore Elphaba Thropp’s (Cynthia Erivo) hopes for what her time at Oz’s Shiz University could bring. “What Is This Feeling?” begins growing the scale of production and choreography as Elphaba’s introverted, studious nature clashes with the humorous, self absorbent style of roommate Galinda Upland (Ariana Grande). And Chu utilizes all the stylized spaces in “Elphie” and “Glinda’s” dorm room to bring soundtrack favorite “Popular” to life with zest and mischief.

Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Baily) arrives to turn Glinda’s head, Shiz’s Dean of Sorcery (Michelle Yeoh, customarily terrific) takes a special interest in Elphaba’s supernatural potential, and an invitation from the Wizard comes just as the threats to Oz’s talking animal population grow more dire.

Grande gives Glinda’s vanity a charm that is somehow inviting and often quite funny, while Erivo brings a level of tortured longing to Elphaba that makes her journey all the more resonate. The two leads – who often sang live during production – have the pipes to bring their own brand of magic, and they share a wonderful on screen chemistry that anchors the film.

Even with the winning moments in Wicked‘s first act, there’s a feeling of unrealized potential, that Chu is holding back. But once we get to the Emerald City, the film – much like the “Wicked Witch” – comes into its own.

“One Short Day” ushers in a grand use of scale and color, and Chu makes sure our time spent at home with the Wizard (a perfectly slippery Jeff Goldblum) is eye-popping at nearly every turn. Stellar production design and CGI effects combine for some fantastic world building, and this change of setting is also when screenwriters Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox get the payoff from their time spent exploring the social commentary found in Gregory Maquire’s source novel.

Elphaba’s eyes are opened to the Wizard’s plan for her, and the newly urgent themes of gaslighting and misuse of power push her and Glinda to the brink. Chu gives Elphaba’s character-defining choice the showcase both it and Erivo deserve, propelling “Defying Gravity” to become the show-stopping finale you hoped it would be.

In the nearly thirty years since the Wicked novel kick-started our interest in “reimagining villains,’ the device has already grown pretty stale. Part one of the film version reminds us why we were captivated in the first place, and how satisfying a move from stage to screen can be.

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Soul Salvage

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Emilia Pérez

by George Wolf

I’ll tell ya what, this year in movies is heading toward the finish line with some mighty ambitious swings.

In just the last few weeks, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis and Todd Phillips’s Joker: Folie à Deux brought grand, messy visions to the big screen. Such commitment is easy to appreciate, which made the results even more frustrating.

Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez offers similar vision and commitment, but has more success finding the humanity and resonance to make it memorable.

And plenty polarizing too, no doubt.

Audiard, the French filmmaker known for simmering, intense dramas such as A Prophet and Rust and Bone, delivers his first Spanish language project as a transgender musical crime thriller that beats the odds. This brash clash of styles could easily bury the chance for true joy or heartbreak, but these characters will not be denied.

The always welcome Zoe Saldana is instantly sympathetic as Rita, an overworked and underpaid attorney in Mexico City who get a surprising offer from a frightening new client. Feared cartel boss Manitas Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón) needs Rita’s help to retire from his business, fake his death, and start a new life as Emilia Perez – the woman he has always dreamed of becoming.

Del Monte’s wife Jessi (Selena Gomez, terrifically against type) and their two young children are more obstacles for Rita to navigate. Emilia still wants them in her life, but doesn’t want them told of her life change.

After a long career as Juan Carlos Gascón, this is Karla’s first film since transitioning, and she plays the dual roles with wonderful clarity. Del Monte is sinister and mysterious, while Emilia glows from the freedom to “love myself as I am.” With Rita’s continued assistance, Emilia dedicates her life to changing her soul, and helping to solve the thousands of missing persons casualties from her former line of work.

Audiard – who also co-wrote the script and several of the original soundtrack tunes – doesn’t seem much concerned with balancing the film’s many tones. Instead, he throws melodrama, romance, lust, humor, noir, and camp at us with unapologetic zest and life-affirming music. These musical set pieces are uniquely well-staged and evocative, adding to the intoxicating nature of the film’s pull.

Gascón, Saldana and Gomez craft a fascinating triangle – one thrown into chaos with the arrival of Jessi’s boyfriend Gustavo (Edgar Ramirez), and their plan to get what Jessi feels she’s long deserved.

If you’re thinking this all sounds like a super-sized telenovela, I get it. And honestly, there’s a decent chance Audiard’s new fondness for the overt won’t let you see Emilia Perez as anything else.

But there is more here. As Emilia herself says, “I lack singing.” Give the film room enough to blend its many voices, and you’ll find some surprisingly touching, blood-soaked harmony.

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New York City Serenade

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West Side Story

by George Wolf

This week on Twitter, director Edgar Wright reminded anyone doubting Steven Spielberg’s way around a musical number to revisit “Anything Goes” from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Okay, point taken, but West Side Story? That’s a big step up.

It is, and he makes it in stride.

Right from the opening minutes, Spielberg’s camera seamlessly ebbs and flows along with the street-roaming Sharks and Jets. Their threats of violence are more palpable this time, as Riff (Mike Faist, an award-worthy standout) and his New York boys want to settle their turf war with Bernardo (David Alvarez) and the Puerto Ricans once and for all.

At the dance that night, the first meeting between tragic lovers Tony (Ansel Elgort) and Maria (Rachel Zegler, a newcomer with an amazing voice who beat out thousands in open auditions) now happens under the gym bleachers, the first in a series of subtle and not-so-subtle updates that Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner (Lincoln, Munich, Angels in America) employ to deepen the narrative impact.

“Dear Officer Krupke” seems more organic in the station house, “America” (led by an irresistible Ariana DeBose as Anita) is given more room to move across the west side city streets, while a department store full of mannequins depicting white suburban dreams proves an ironically joyful setting for Maria and her co-workers’ buoyant reading of “I Feel Pretty.”

And from one musical set-piece to the next, Spielberg’s touch is smoothy precise, starting wide to capture the breadth of Justin Peck’s homage to Jerome Robbins’s iconic choreography, zooming in for intimacy, and then above the dancers and rumblers for gorgeous aerials set with pristine light and shadow. Stellar efforts from cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and production designer Adam Stockhausen turn the everyday drab of hanging laundry and fabric remnants into an elegant playground for Spielberg’s camera eye.

In short, it looks freaking fantastic.

It sounds pretty great, too, even beyond the genius of Bernstein’s melodies and Sondheim’s lyrics. Because Spielberg couples his appropriate and welcome diversity of cast with a complete lack of subtitles, rightly putting the opposing cultures on equal narrative footing, and bringing more depth to the cries of “speak English!”

And as the gang fight turns deadly, all of the stakes are embraced more tightly. The offhand bigotry of Lt. Schrank (Corey Stoll, terrific as always) is more casually cruel, the identity conflict of Anybodys (Iris Menas) feels more defined, while Anita’s fateful visit to Doc’s store – now run by Valentina (expect another Oscar nod for the incredible Rita Moreno) – plainly calls it like it always was.

Then, as his (almost) parting shot, Spielberg unveils his grandest revision, a move nearly as bold and risky as the one Richard Attenborough face-planted with in 1985’s A Chorus Line.

By altering the context of one of the most emotional songs, Attenborough showed he didn’t know, or didn’t care, about what the show was trying to say. Spielberg, though, gently adds a perspective that makes Tony and Maria’s quest soar with a renewed, more universal vitality.

Just like most everything else in this West Side Story.

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Louder Than Words

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tick, tick…BOOM!

by George Wolf

What’s an aspiring writer to do when his first major work is bypassed for the eager anticipation about what he’ll do next?

He takes his agent’s advice to “move on to the next one. And write what you know.”

Broadway trailblazer Jonathan Larson – Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and composer of Rent – agonized for 8 years over Superbia, a futuristic musical that never earned a full production. When Larson did move on to the next one, it became tick, tick…BOOM!, his autobiographical story of a composer named Jon whose final days as a twentysomething bring feelings of rejection and inadequacy.

ttBOOM! made it to off-Broadway in 1990, with revivals beginning in 2001,15 years after both the phenomenal success of Rent and Larson’s tragic death from an aortic aneurysm at the age of 35.

Now, director Lin-Manuel Miranda brings Larson’s story of struggling artistry to the screen with an infectious exuberance and undying respect for those committed to the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd.

Andrew Garfield stars as Jon, who waits tables in a New York diner, works on his musical and worries about how much other people have accomplished before turning 30 (“Sondheim wrote West Side Story at 27!”)

While Jon struggles to find enough money to keep the lights on, his longtime girlfriend Susan (Alexandra Shipp) mulls a tempting job offer in the Berkshires, and his best friend Michael (Robin de Jesus) decides it’s finally time to give up the Broadway dream and get a real 9 to 5 gig.

While everyone – including Sondheim himself! (a terrific Bradley Whitford) – tells him Superbia needs one more big song in the second act, Jon rebuffs any need for a life “backup plan,” even as his tenuous relationship status and a co-worker’s HIV diagnosis remind him of each precious tick of the clock.

Miranda and screenwriter Steven Levenson (Dear Evan Hanson, Fosse/Verdon) effectively layer the musical segments with real-life inspirations and one-man show beginnings that build to workshop performances and Broadway fantasies. From the birthday defiance of “30/90” to the pleading interplay between Garfield, Shipp and Vanessa Hudgens (as Susan’s stage persona) on “Come to Your Senses,” Miranda’s staging is lively and stylish, peppered by plenty of Easter eggs and cameos saluting years of musical greats (including Chita Rivera, Bernadette Peters, Bebe Neuwirth and two of Hamiton‘s Schuyler sisters in the show-stopping “Sunday” alone).

Garfield delivers an electric, committed performance, singing well and absolutely selling the manic, no-sleep-til-curtain-time tunnel vision that Larson clings to instead of admitting that there might be any other way to live.

And as a tribute to this life, the creative process and one man who personified both, tick, tick…BOOM! is a runaway hit. But in the process, it forgoes a sense of intimacy that might have brought us closer to Larson himself. That’s a trade-off the film ultimately seems comfortable with. Miranda, Garfield and company are going big here, and end up reaching the balcony with crowd-pleasing panache.

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In Your Letter

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Dear Evan Hansen

by George Wolf

It’s not that Evan himself is hard to like, even flawed and unlikeable main characters can be ambitious and welcome. The real challenge for the big screen adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen is turning the young man’s choices into something truly hopeful and inspiring.

Evan (Ben Platt, whose Broadway performance garnered one of the musical’s many Tony awards) is a painfully shy, anxiety-ridden high school senior getting assignments from his therapist that involve writing letters to himself. Through a convoluted mixup that actually lands as plausible, one of those letters ends up in the hands of Connor Murphy (Colton Ryan), another troubled young man who can’t make friends.

When Connor takes his own life, his mother (Amy Adams) and stepfather (Danny Pino) read the letter and reach out to Evan, looking for comfort from someone they believe must have been their son’s best friend.

It’s a cruel and horrible lie, one that Evan ultimately indulges because it makes his own life better. Evan gains friends, he becomes close to Connor’s wealthy family while his own mother (Julianne Moore) works late to makes ends meet, and he gets alone time with Connor’s sister Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever), who just happens to be Evan’s longtime crush.

While the facade can’t last, it’s one that’s chock full of possibilities for another shallow YA specialness parade. But director Stephen Chbosky and writer Steven Levenson do manage to craft moments of truth that help offset the manipulative atmosphere.

Chbosky’s (The Perks of being a Wallflower, Wonder) choice to have the cast sing live is a smart one, bringing a needed intimacy to the music and giving Platt the chance to really impress. But while Chbosky often maneuvers into and out of the music with style, too many of those set pieces seem tentative, with only a few of the songs (“Requiem,” “Words Fail,” “So Big, So Small”) resonating beyond the frequent and generic “I feel seen” messaging.

Platt truly has a wonderful voice, but he has trouble trading what served him so well on the stage for a more nuanced film approach to emoting. Yes, at 27 Platt is a bit too old now for the role, but that’s less of a problem than surrounding him with such authentic screen talent. As Evan becomes less of an awkward outcast, Platt’s screentime with Adams, Moore and especially Dever (who gives the film its most honest moments) only highlights a need for understatement that Platt and Chbosky don’t address.

At a robust 137 minutes, Dear Evan Hansen has plenty of time to grapple with the moral conundrum at its core, but ultimately falls just short of the more universal insight it seeks.

The film shows us teens that are stressed and over-medicated, with feelings of inadequacy compounded by social media expectations and misunderstood by families and peer groups. Then when tragedy occurs, the shock opens avenues for exploitation and personal gain. Evan takes one of them.

There are teachable moments there, and the soaring melodies of Dear Evan Hansen will put occasional lumps in your throat. But is Evan’s journey a thoughtful and cautionary parable, or a shameless exploitation in itself?

In the end, neither. Much like its flawed main character, it’s a mess of awkward and misplaced intentions, as likely to generate facepalms as it is a loving embrace.

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Songbird

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Annette

by George Wolf

Annette wraps the beautifully enigmatic visions of director Leos Carax around the idiosyncratic pop musings of Ron and Russell Mael (aka Sparks) for a what-did-I-just-watch spectacle with undeniable will.

Anyone who’s seen Holy Motors knows Carax is a puzzler. And while Edgar Wright’s recent doc The Sparks Brothers may have nudged the Mael boys toward the mainstream, the songs and the story they bring to this film are a mighty slippery mix.

Think A Star Is Born with Sondheim sensibilities, Shakespearean tragedies, and the kitsch of a Springfield Community Theatre production from The Simpsons.

Magic, right? Well, sometimes.

Adam Driver stars as Henry, a standup comic provocateur whose new show “The Ape of God” has him boasting that he only does comedy so he “can tell the truth without getting killed.”

Marion Cotillard is Ann, a famous opera star who “saves” her audience by dying onstage every night.

As detailed by headlines from the Showbizz Network, the two fall passionately in love, get married and have a daughter named Annette, who comes into the world with an unexpected gift.

In fact, you’ll find most everything about Annette to be a surprise. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

The actors sing live and frequently break that fourth wall, which brings new intimacy to some very intimate moments and quickly immerses us in the grandness of Carax’s vision. Armed with sumptuous cinematography from Caroline Champetier, Carax rolls out a succession of gorgeously hypnotic set pieces.

Be ready, though, for the dreamlike tone to often run headlong into campy silliness that leaves many metaphorical elements searching for a resonate metaphor.

Just when Annette is clear about its musings on the relationship between artist and audience, or about fame, or self-loathing, or fragile masculinity or creative boundaries, it goes all Cop Rock on us.

But man, it’s transfixing to look at, and the Driver/Cotillard pairing is just as powerful as you’d expect. Just don’t expect anything else from Annette, and what you find won’t soon be forgotten.

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Tell Me More, Tell Me More

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Best Summer Ever

by George Wolf

Bad Mood? Tough week?

If Best Summer Ever doesn’t turn your frown upside down, I’ll eat a bug.

Two high schoolers not named Danny and Sandy enjoy some sweetly romantic summer nights, then go their separate ways…until fate brings them back together for a musical teenage dream filled with a wonderfully diverse cast of actors.

Anthony (Rickey Wilson, Jr., showing easy charisma) and Sage, a charmer in a wheelchair (Shannon DeVido – who effortlessly steals this film), meet at a summer dance camp in Vermont. Anthony tells Sage he attends a dance academy in NYC – but’s he’s really a football star in Pennsylvania who relishes the chance to indulge his secret love of dance. Sage has a secret of her own – the illegal pot business her two moms (Eileen Grubba and Holly Palmer) operate that keeps the family constantly on the move.

But at summer’s end, an unexpected complication leads to Sage’s family landing in Pa. – and Sage enrolling at the very same high school Anthony attends! Oooh, this is delicious, especially for Queen Bee Beth (a terrific Madeline Rhodes, aka MuMu, also part of the songwriting team), the evil cheerleader who hatches a devious plan to become Homecoming Queen and take Anthony as her King!

Directors/co-writers Michael Parks Randa and Lauren Smitelli craft an irresistible take on the high school musical, populated by just as many physically and/or developmentally challenged actors as not. The joyful representation in this film will swell your heart, especially when you realize – early on – that none of the characters’ perceived disabilities are treated as anything less than ordinary.

And more than that, there isn’t an ounce of condescension to be found, as Randa and Smitelli find some big laughs skewering high school stereotypes. Beth casually drops surprise dick jokes, and two Statler and Waldorf-type booth announcers (Eric Folan and Phil Lussier) bring some hearty sarcasm to the big Homecoming game. See, Anthony is the team’s kicker – and he’s the star because the rest of the team sucks so badly (which causes the resentful quarterback [Jacob Waltuck] to hilariously cuss out the crowd).

Yes, the songs are often cheesy and sung over what sounds like weak karaoke backing tracks, but the title tune’s been stuck in my head for days now.

You’ll see some big names in the film’s list of producers, and some (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard) even pop up in cameos. But the most important may be the members of Zeno Mountain Farm – a Vermont retreat committed to a world where “all can thrive, feel connected, and be empowered.”

For 72 minutes, Best Summer Ever gives us a glimpse of what that world might look like, and it’s inspiring, exhilarating and fun.

But watch out for that Beth – she’s so mean!

Best Summer Ever is available to stream starting Tuesday, April 27th

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Look What the Cat Dragged In

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Cats

by Christie Robb

People say that you’re either a cat person or a dog person. I’m a cat person, but definitely not a Cats person. But if you are, there’s a lot to enjoy in the new film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1981 musical based on poems by T.S. Eliot.

How else could you possibly get tickets to see a show with this cast? Taylor Swift. Idris Elba. Rebel Wilson. James Corden. Jennifer Hudson. How else can you watch a feline Dame Judi Dench curl up convincingly in a basket? Or glimpse Sir Ian McKellen lap from a bowl of milk?

A movie is a very egalitarian way to enjoy a Broadway musical. This one is about an assemblage of cats who have gathered together under the full moon to decide which one of them will be chosen to be reborn into a new life. Their best life. They pitch their case by singing the song of themselves. There’s very little in the way of traditional narrative structure although director Tom Hooper (Les Misérables) does tinker around with the play a bit to try to tease one out. It’s more like a musical revue designed around a central theme.

Initially concerned about falling into the uncanny valley of CG feline effects on the actors’ familiar faces, after some early creepy moments I got used to it. The realistic tail twitches and subtle changes in the angle of an ear serve to give additional cues as to the interior life of a cat that mere facial expressions alone can’t provide. (The opportunity to see emotional reactions through closeups is another advantage of a screen version.)

Occasionally the feline illusion is broken (most often by Swift and Elba) and instead of seeing a cat you are confronted with a dancing furry naked person with Barbie-doll genitalia. But most of the time, it works.

Wilson and Corden are amusing. Watching Francesca Hayward (principal ballerina at the Royal Ballet) dance the role of Victoria is a delight. But the true star of this show is Jennifer Hudson as Grizabella, a former “glamour cat” now old and suffering through hard times.

As in Les Mis, Hooper has his cast sing live, and it is Hudson’s performance of the signature song “Memory” that far outshines every other musical number here. It’s likely what you’ll be humming as you walk out of the theatre, and the one thing you’ll most remember about these Cats.

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Like the Beat from a Tambourine

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Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again

by Hope Madden

You may be asking yourself, is Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again just 90 minutes of second-rate, b-side Abba songs? All those weird songs that no sensible story about unplanned pregnancy could call for? Songs like Waterloo?

Nope. It is nearly two full hours of it.

Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) wants to open her mother’s crumbling Greek hotel as an upscale island resort. She’s so terribly angsty about it! Will anyone come to the grand opening? Will her mom be proud of her? Can she handle the pressure if her husband’s traveling and two of her three dads can’t make it?

Transition to a simpler time, a time when her mom Donna was young (played by Lily James), bohemian and striking out on her own. She has chutzpah. She has friends who love her. She has great hair.

The majority of the sequel to Phillida Lloyd’s 2008 smash looks back on the romantic voyage that created the three dad business of the first film.

James is a fresh and interesting a young version of the character Meryl Streep brought to life in the original. Likewise, Jessica Keenan Wynn and Alexa Davies make wonderful younger selves for Tanya (Christine Baranski) and Rosie (Julie Walters).

The three dads have young counterparts as well, though only Harry (Colin Firth/Hugh Skinner) lands a memorable characterization. Firth is reliably adorable while Skinner’s socially awkward young man is as embarrassing and earnest as we might have imagined.

Also, Cher.

Expect an awful lot of needless angst and long stretches without humor. Whether present-time or flashback, the film desperately misses the funny friends. Desperately. But when they are onscreen, Here We Go Again cannot help but charm and entertain.

The story is weaker, although there is a reason for that. While the original gift-wrapped an origin story to plumb, the plumbing is slow going when you still have to abide by the Abba songtacular gimmick.

The sequel’s musical numbers rely too heavily on slow tunes and stretch too far to make the odder Abba songs work, but in a way, that is, in fact, the movie’s magic.

Your best bet is to abandon yourself to the sheer ridiculousness of it. There is literally no other way to enjoy it.





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Big Top PT

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The Greatest Showman

by Hope Madden

In so many ways, The Greatest Showman is a wildly inappropriate vision of the life of PT Barnum—a politician, spokesman for temperance, abolitionist and, above all things, an outsized promoter and self-promoter. He’d been all these things for decades before he dipped his toe into the circus industry, but what fun is that story?

Let’s rewrite. We need romance, lessons, heartwarming children and resolvable, tidy drama. Barnum as a tot, working dirty-faced and split-shoed besides his father, tailoring for Dickensian clients and wages. But he has dreams. Big dreams.

Yes, the film simplifies the actual story of Barnum’s life to its barest lessons-to-be-learned minimum. The oversimplification spills into the core conflict (of many) in the man’s actual history: his presentation and monetization of “human curiosities.”

But maybe that’s where this movie is closest to the truth. It is selling you an enjoyable time, spinning your head with breathless setpieces, color, glamour, surprise, happiness. Sleight of hand. And at the same time selling the tale that, no matter how Barnum may have used these people for his own profit, this is really a story of empowerment.

“Some critics might have even called this show a celebration of humanity,” says Barnum’s harshest critic, New York Herald writer James Gordon Bennett.

As genuinely if superficially enjoyable as The Greatest Showman is, there is something unseemly in embracing so tidy a view.

Still, Hugh Jackman—maybe the most charismatic performer in modern film—is in great voice in yet another big, big musical. His earnest likeability and exuberance convince you to disregard your instincts on this film just as surely as his Barnum uses the same tactics to lure uncertain outcasts out of the shadows and onto the stage.

Michelle Williams fares less well as Barnum’s wife Charity, saddled as she is with the bottomless devotion and forgiveness that is the mark of the underwritten spouse character. Rebecca Ferguson mines for emotional clarity in a small role and a magnetic Keala Settle is a natural fit for the heart and soul of Barnum’s “curiosities.”

Director Michael Gracey, working from a script by Jenny Bicks and Bill Condon, crafts a Moulin Rouge-esque vision that transports you, which is appropriate when tackling the life of PT Barnum.

It also works to convince you that all this—the spotlight, the manipulation, the exploitation, the laughter and the admiration—was the best possible thing for Barnum’s performers.

Barnum might have liked that spin, too, but maybe that’s the problem.