Originally Posted by
Sturgeon's Lawyer
I admit it: I love musicals. For me, West Side Story (not Spielberg's remake) and Fiddler on the Roof are two nigh-perfect movies.
But I love it all, from Disney's Lion King to Avenue Q's pisstake on Sesame Street, to Hamilton to Spamalot to, uh, Urinetown. Mary Poppins to Wicked to Into the Woods.
I even like the sequel to Rocky Horror, Shock Treatment in fact, I'll argue that it's a better movie on almost every level than RHPS. (But what's better than either is The Phantom of the Paradise, relased about the same time as RHPS. It's sort of the antidote to RHPS, a movie about the very dark dark side of all that decadance RHPS celebrates. Plus, it has Jessica Harper, who also plays Janet in Shock Treatment, and Paul Williams, who, well, Paul motherfucking Williams.)
I could go on. The Sound of Music, Singin' in the Rain, the compleat works of Gilbert and Sullivan, A Damsel in Distress...
(...h'mmm, that one deserves special comment. Fred Astaire, Joan Fontaine, George Burns and Gracie Allen, and some great character actors. Based on a novel by P.G. Wodehouse. Songs by the Gerswhins. Academy-award winning choreography by Hermes Pan. And the odds are, you've never heard of it. Am I right? But there's a decent chance that you've heard a couple of the songs: "A Foggy Night in London Town" and "Nice Work If You Can Get It.")
Musicals require a special suspension of disbelief, the idea that someone in an emotionally stressful situation will suddenly burst into song. (There was a lovely Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode that played with that very idea.) But it is, to my mind, no harder than suspending disbelief that those reporters knew Kane's last word when the movie carefully establishes that he dies alone; or that a goofball angel can take a man into an alternate world where he never existed; or that you can fire one M16 with each arm and not be knocked on your ass by the double recoil. (That one actually requires more suspension than musicals. I myself have been known to burst into song in stressful situations -- though not, usually, an original song composed for the moment...)
Bookmarks