Nine: Grade F

F
Nine (2009)

Daniel Day-Lewis, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Marion Cotillard, Sophia Loren, Kate Hudson; Director Rob Marshall.

Usually it is not worth the time or effort to review movies that I consider failures (and there are plenty of those absent from this blog), but this musical received four 2009 academy award nominations so it seems possible that other people saw it differently than I.

It is, in large part, an homage to Fellini’s 1963 film, 8 ½. A famous Italian director (Day-Lewis) has trouble getting his movie made, and even his script written. As he imagines or stages parts of the show, we get frequent loud, colorful, feathery song and dance numbers, which are the heart of this film. Intercut are b&w scenes that look like they are taken right from 8 ½ although my memory is not detailed enough to say for sure. The analogy is self-flattery at best anyway, for “Nine” has none of the creativity of the original.

For my tastes, this film is recycled cliché (if that is possible), a lot of it taken from the dreadful 2002 musical, Chicago, by the same director. It has a similar set, similar Fosse-style choreography, and similar music. Then it tries to add Fellini-esque moves but gets those wrong. For example, there is a number with Cruz wiggling around, showing her butt like a pole dancer, but if that’s supposed to invoke earthy Fellini sensuality, it is quite wide of the mark. How much talent can a butt have, even Penelope’s? Other dance numbers involve women writhing around pseudo-erotically on wooden chairs with their knees spread as if it meant something. The dance numbers have none of Fosse’s aggressive eroticism and none Fellini’s lyricism. It is just cliché action for the sake of action, apparently with the idea that the feathers and bustiers will make up for what’s missing in musical and choreographic integrity.

Cinematography is not bad, lighting is often good, but the dance numbers are all so setbound that there isn’t much to look at. When we do get off the multiply arched Coliseum-like set (similar to that used in Chicago), the shots are stereotypes, using strong color filters, high contrast lighting, odd angles, etc. without discernible purpose.

Kidman can sort of sing, and she acquits herself without disgrace, but all the songs, to my ear, amount to little more than braying. There is zero dramatic tension, the dialog lacks any originality, and the acting is almost self-parody (especially by Day-Lewis). Even the costumes are stereotypes. All of that could be excused in a musical if the songs and dances were compelling, but here they are just noisy exercises in shouting and random wiggling. I could not find any redeeming virtue. Others did, apparently, so my conclusion must be simply that this film was not to my taste.

Saturday Night Fever: Grade A

A
Saturday Night Fever (1977)
John Travolta, Karen Lynn Gorney; Director John Badham.

This glorification of the disco era is much better than I remembered it. The acting is remarkably good, directing is good, and the story has a lot more subtlety and sociological complexity than I remember. New York sets are rich and authentic. Travolta is king of the Brooklyn disco hall, often opposite partner and romantic interest Gorney. Disco dancing (of the Travolta-esque kind) looks contrived and silly, but the killer Bee Gees music makes it infectious nevertheless. I always liked disco music and was sorry to see it fade away. None did it better than the Bee Gees. This is definitely worth a repeat look.

Mamma Mia!: Grade F

F
Mamma Mia! (2008)
Amanda Seyfried, Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgaard, Colin Firth, Christine Baranski; Director Phyllida Lloyd.

I know, I know! I am the only person in America who did not like this movie, and I apologize for that. I tried to like it. I like musicals. I like these actors a lot. I like a lot of color and movement on the screen. I like romantic comedies. I just could not find any redeeming virtue here. Yet the movie is hugely popular, so obviously I was not in the right mood or maybe I am from Mars.

I did not see the Broadway show, so this movie was my only introduction to the work. It started out very slowly, and then got even slower. The story could not be more trite or less believable: an apparently American young woman (Seyfried) living on a Greek island with her mother (Streep) is going to get married, and decides to invite three men who once dated her mother. One of them, she figures, must be her father. She does not advise the mother of her plan, and the men do not know each other. Imagine the hilarity that ensues. Singing hilarity of course, since it is a musical. But alas, I did not care for the songs. The music was by ABBA, a well-known popular band from the 1970’s but it was not my cup of tea. And, while Streep can acquit herself without too much embarrassment when singing, Brosnan definitely cannot. He was excruciating to hear. The others, so-so. There was not one outstanding warbler in the bunch.

Acting? What acting? How can you act in a story like this, characters like these? There is nothing to act about. The whole thing was so artificial, any performance would be as arbitrary as any other. There was no pathos, no joy, no nothing. The non-singing dialog was supposed to be witty, I think, but it was beyond lame. No dancing either. There was lots of twirling and farcical gestures and jumping into the sea, but no dancing. Putting 60-year old Streep (or her stunt double) on a wire made her look sprightly, albeit like a Jack-in-the-box, but not like a dancer. Nor did I get any sense of sun, surf, and laid-back Zorba-time in the Greek isles. Like I said, I’m Martian. Sorry.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story: Grade B

B
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)
John C. Reilly, Jenna Fischer. Director Jake Kasdan

As a satire of the music biopic genre, this movie is more silly than insightful. It mocks recent pictures such as Ray and Walk Tall, and many individual musical styles, from Dylan to the Beatles. The musical writing itself is even humorous, the way original songs are made to sound like well-known songs without actually copying. Interspersed with unfunny melodramatic exaggeration, there are some very good postmodern digs at individual artists, such as Elvis or the Beatles. The references are “postmodern” because while making fun of the target, the jokes also ironically draw attention to themselves, so the joke itself is part of the joke. It is clever stuff, but only clever, not revealing of anything. The whole movie has the feeling of a somewhat lame SNL sketch, or a series of them. Reilly does his own singing however and that’s quite impressive. Fischer (“Pam” from The Office) really can act. You don’t once think of her as a receptionist. If you’re a fan of goofy, adolescent humor, and of co-writer Judd Apatow (40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, etc.) then you’ll enjoy this light, throwaway comedy.

Romance & Cigarettes: Grade A

Romance & Cigarettes (2007)
James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Steve Buscemi, Christopher Walken, Eddie Izzard; Writer-Director John Turturro.

“Madcap” is the word that comes to mind. It is a nominal musical, but also a satire of musicals. We hear originals from the ‘50’s and ‘60’s, including James Brown, Elvis, Tom Jones, Englebert Humperdink, and many others – all well chosen tune cooties that stick in your ear for days. The cast seems to have a blast singing them and dancing to some weakly formatted choreography. Sarandon does well, and apparently Winslet really can sing. Walken can’t of course, but you are laughing so hard at his Elvis schtik you don’t care. The cast sings just a little, for fun, but mostly lip-syncs to the originals, because otherwise it would be a horror picture.

The story, such as it is, concerns Sarandon’s fury over husband Ganolfini’s infidelity. She recruits Walken to help track down Winslet the hussie, and there is an actual catfight (interspersed with song, of course). The husband eventually sees the error of his ways and tries to patch it up. It takes a long time to tell this story because there are so many nonsequitur scenes along the way. There is no serious character development though. The outline story is just a framework on which to hang song and dance numbers. Yet the music is not related to the story. It is just music for the sake of music. As a satire of the genre then, the movie doesn’t quite work because of that.

Oddly, the dialog centers around crude descriptions of sexual activity and sexual organs. Writers and directors take a note: this is 2008, and there is the internet now, maybe you’ve heard. Sexual crudity is no longer shocking or funny, doesn’t develop character or plot, so why not use your fine craft to tell us something?

The acting in this film is compelling, especially by Sarandon, Winslet, and Buscemi. Gandolfini will always be Tony Soprano and seems miscast here. But this is not high drama, more like sketch comedy. The multitude of self-contained, five-minute sketches is mostly engaging, even if pointless overall. The sets and costumes are good: working class Brooklyn or Queens in the early to mid 1970’s, is my guess, although it is difficult to be sure since there are several anachronisms. This movie is weird, wacky, chaotic, bizarre, not for everybody, but entirely original and a pleasure to experience.

Across the Universe: Grade A

A
Across the Universe (2007)
Evan Rachel Wood, Jim Sturgess, Joe Anderson, Dana Fuchs, with Eddie Izzard, Bono, Joe Cocker, and Salma Hayek. Director Julie Taymor

This is not a Beatles movie but a traditional Grease-like musical about the late 1960’s in America, using exclusively Beatles songs. Director Taymor Surveyed 200 songs in the Beatles’ catalog owned by Sony (this is a Sony movie), and arranged a dozen of them to fit a conventional a romance (boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl), set against Vietnam war protests. A young factory worker from Liverpool (Sturgess) comes to New York and falls in love with a girl (Wood) who is working with an anti-war movement. Her brother (Anderson) is drafted and there are antiwar marches, protests and riots until the protagonist is arrested and deported.

The characters sing their way through these events, giving the Beatles’ songs shocking new meanings. For example, Strawberry Fields has Sturgess’ character, a graphic artist, squeezing metaphorical blood from fresh strawberries against images juxtaposed from the war. An animated war poster of Uncle Sam sings, “I Want You” and that morphs into a mind-boggling reconceptualization of “She’s So Heavy.” As that song evolves a fantastic piece of choreography develops in an Army induction center. “Let it Be” becomes a song of utter despair when it is sung in the midst of the Detroit riots of 1967. As for “Happiness is a Warm Gun,” well, it demonstrates the stunning scope of Taymor’s imagination. It’s hard to believe this is the same director who filmed Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus so brilliantly a few years ago.

There is no attempt to recreate the lives, voices and sounds of the Beatles, which would be impossible anyway. Yet the visuals acknowledge landmarks in the well-known Beatles’ story. Eddie Izzard does a show-stopping, Sargeant Pepper-esque number with giant Blue Meanies (alluding to Yellow Submarine). Bono leads a psychedelic crowd seeking a guru in the countryside, in a stereotypical but still beautiful solarized and color-manipulated segment. Yoko-like characters swim underwater. The movie is rich with musical and cultural allusions that survivors of the era and fans of the Beatles will appreciate.

The music is lovingly sung, usually at a slower tempo than we remember, which highlights the beauty of the songs. Their complex production has been excised, revealing stark melodic purity. The singers perform them organically, from the heart, again making the audience reconceptualize them. The young unknown actors are very talented, especially Sturgess. His rendition of the title song makes it completely new. I think if I had not come of age with the music, I still would be enraptured by the brilliance of this movie.

Hairspray: Grade D

D
Hairspray (2007)
John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken, Queen Latifah, Nikki Blonsky. Director Adam Shankman.

This musical comedy pretends to a serious message, advocacy for racial integration in 1960’s Baltimore. A chubby white teenager (Blonsky), born to dance to rock ‘n’ roll, gets a spot on the TV show representing American Bandstand. She engages the black dancers (who appear only on “Negro Day”) and introduces new moves, consisting mainly of flailing the arms, to a white audience. The story treats the racial divide of the period as a cartoon, and except for some colorful costumes, the movie is not even good looking. The music is highly repetitive. Harmonies are bland, tonal range is about four notes, rhythms grate unrelentingly, and lyrics, when intelligible, are inane. None of the excitement, soul, or romanticism of 1960’s pop music, black or white, is captured.

This is a remake of the 1988 Hairspray, which was already a knock off of Travolta’s 1977 Grease. There was also the long running Broadway show, Hairspray. So here it is again on film for some reason. Travolta plays Blonsky’s mother in the kind of enormous fat suit favored by Eddie Murphy. Walken is the husband in bowling shirt. Neither character is funny, not even in that contrived, “let’s all pretend this is funny” musical comedy sense. The dancing is tragically awful. Michelle Pfeiffer still looks good but, I am sorry to report, cannot sing. Walken can’t either, but doesn’t really aspire to. Queen Latifah does have musical talent however, and she is one of the few bright lights in this dim movie.