Notes on a Matinee: CATS (2019)

(110m, Color / Directed by Tom Hooper / Screenplay by Tom Hooper, Lee Hall / Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Lyrics by T.S. Eliot, "Memory" lyrics by Eliot, Trevor Nunn, "Beautiful Ghosts" lyrics by Taylor Swift / Starring: Jennifer Hudson, Judi Dench, Taylor Swift, Robbie Fairchild, Jason Derulo, Steven McRae, Rebel Wilson, James Corden, Ian McKellan, Laurie Davidson, Francesca Hayward, Idris Elba


When Cats debuted on Broadway in 1982, after its roaring success in London the year before, it became the hottest ticket in New York. The show was instantly the object of admiration and derision in equal measure. Up to that time, audiences loved Andrew Lloyd Webber's shows indiscriminately (the low-impact failure of Jeeves in 1975 had been his only outright flop) and the 80s were nothing if not all about the excesses of riding a high concept (a whole evening in a cat-sized wonderland). Critics were divided, praising Gillian Lynne's choreography and the cast's commitment, as well as the stunning set/environment designed by John Napier (an oversized junkyard - itself an amalgam of Godspell and Stop the World, I Want to Get Off!), but withholding praise for director Trevor Nunn's all-over-the-place character dictates and the indefensibly flimsy structure of the ostensible plot.

On both stage and screen, Cats is episodic, with the vague idea that these cats come together annually for a ball, and their de facto leader, Old Deuteronomy, announces the one lucky cat who will move on to the "heaviside layer" and ascend into another plane of existence or something. The prize goes to bedraggled alley cat Grizabella, the only obvious candidate. That's it. It's vague to the point of nonexistence, and provides an excuse for a panoply of cats to vie (however obliquely) for the rather dubious privilege of riding a giant rubber tire into the theater's rafters. It's barely there, concept-wise, doing little to conceal the show's genesis as a song cycle derived from T.S. Eliot's book of light verse, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, no doubt all the rage after having been extensively quoted by a deliciously hammy Peter Ustinov in Logan's Run (1976).

Elaine Paige, the British actress who originated the stage role of Evita only to find herself overshadowed by the force that is Patti LuPone, once again found herself eclipsed by her American replacement. Betty Buckley became a sensation with her steely, soaring rendition of the show's anthem, "Memory." Other notable original cast members included Ken Page (best known to modern audiences as the voice of Mr Oogy-Boogy from 1993's The Nightmare Before Christmas), Terrence Mann (who'd earn a Tony nomination as Javert in Les Miserables), and Harry Groener (the Mayor from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"). The show eventually wore out its welcome with New Yorkers, but kept selling out as a tourist destination show and the object of David Letterman's endless ridicule. Cats earned the ire of "serious" theater folk once it surpassed A Chorus Line as the longest running Broadway show of all time.

From its first success onward, there have been myriad attempts to adapt Cats to film, and the project had remained in development limbo since as early as 1985. This, despite John Guare setting it up as the ne plus ultra of insanely unnecessary adaptations in his dark comedy Six Degrees of Separation (play, 1990).

"Paul," the character of Ouisa Kittredge addresses the play's central con artist in the play. "I'm worried. Is it right to make a movie of Cats?"

"Yes," according to those behind the 2019 film adaptation, who grabbed every British celebrity available (and Jennifer Hudson and Taylor Swift) to assemble this ill-advised live-action version.

The most astounding thing about the film is the apparent complete lack of planning from everyone involved, as if they had a week to pull it together before the drugs wore off or the money dried up.

Costumes are off-the-rack and ill-fitting to the point of distraction -- some of the cats are "nude" and covered in fur (I'll get to that), but many are wearing trousers, jackets, coats, shoes(?!) and hats, all of which seem like they were chosen by firing cast members through a thrift shop out of a cannon.

Sets have been constructed, a la The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981), slightly oversized to make the "cats" seem cat-sized, but the lack of consistent scaling gives the queasy sensation of being unmoored in some Alice in Wonderland laws of physics. Characters seem to shrink or grow depending on camera placement and what set they're on. Scale is as meaningless in Cats as it is in a Don Bluth animated feature.

Some songs have been pre-recorded, and are performed to playback (and some criminally auto-tuned), while others follow the unwise path director Tom Hooper chose for his milquetoast film adaptation of Les Miserables (2012), recording the songs live.

Let me digress a bit here.

While it's all well and good (and, in fact, should be the only option) to have singers perform live in the theater, it makes absolutely no sense, creatively or practically, to force a singer to sing live while performing for the camera. Not only does it result in less than good sound (and Cats  suffers from hands-down the worst sound design I've ever experienced in a studio-produced musical), it restricts the camera movement and the movement of any other element in the shot, as well as any unseen crew. It also forces the audience to endure at length the copiously overflowing nasal passages of Jennifer Hudson. It may sound like a bold move in a press release, but it actually robs film of its musical property by severely limiting its visual potential.

Film is a visual medium. Theater is a medium of immediacy. They are two distinctly separate things, which is a depressing thing to have to point out in a review.

The soundtrack of Cats is as inconsistent as everything else about the film. Aside from the live-recording issues mentioned above, the sound is so muffled throughout that one begins to wonder if Universal instructed theaters to strap pillows over the speakers-- and then rip them away once Hudson hits the key change in "Memory," where the volume suddenly shoots up several decibels. The overall effect of this is the same has having your ears pop at high altitude, and it is not pleasant, regardless of whether or not you're actually enjoying Hudson's weepy, gasping, snot-soaked rendition of the song . "Beautiful Ghosts," Lloyd Webber and Taylor Swift's new song ("The memories were lost long ago / But at least you have beautiful ghosts" goes the refrain, with nary a rhyme in sight) sits uneasily with the rest of the score, which at least was informed by Eliot's undeniable poetic aptitude.

Most of the musical moments remain intact from the stage show, with the notable removal of both the "Battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles" and "Growltiger's Last Stand," primarily dance moments which would only have further befuddled the film's creative team. As it is, the dance moments of Cats range from nearly exhilarating ("Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat") to infuriating ("The Old Gumbie Cat"), with very little in between. Mostly, the dance moments give you time to check your watch, and, perhaps, your pulse.

Lynne's choreography from the stage, one of the show's few widely praised elements, has been completely eliminated in favor of new dances by Andy Blankenbuehler (Hamilton) whose frenetic groupings and inexplicable reliance on impossible arabesques from the casts' computer-generated tails makes less an impression than does some very awkward wire work inexplicably flown in (pun intended) from a wuxia movie.

Hooper is at sea, along with most of his cast.

Of the pros, only Dench and McKellen escape mostly unscathed, though not before searing our eyeballs with the images of a digitally upstretched leg, in the case of the former, and lapping milk from a saucer, in the case of the latter. One imagines they shared the simultaneous realization that they were a long long way from their magnificent pairing in Trevor Nunn's production of Macbeth at the Royal Shakespeare Company (1976). Francesca Hayward, as audience point-of-view character Victoria, gets a few opportunities to show off her ballet skills (as her feet continually morph from toe shoes to cat toes to human feet with no rhyme or reason). Laurie Davidson's Mr Mistoffelees is more under-served by the production than any, as he seems to be giving the sort of performance the material is best suited for.

James Corden and Rebel Wilson essentially play themselves - bad comedians. Each steamroller through their numbers, fat jokes inflated to vulgar proportions and surrounded by filth (literal garbage in Corden's case, rats and cockroaches in Wilson's) that a more inventive/imaginative director would have made hilarious or at least visually pleasing. Here, it just comes off as repulsive. In keeping with the bizarre "look, it's all people!" aesthetic (if the film can be said to have an aesthetic), the mice and roaches are also played by humans in digitally augmented costume and arbitrarily digitally shrunk to miniature size. Cats is a nightmare inside a fever dream inside a delusion, and don't you forget it.

Steven McRae's Skimbleshanks delivers the film's most rousing song, but the camera never gives him a single close-up or stationary shot of him, so for all I know it could be a series of actors playing the character. Hooper shoots dance sequences as if he's at a sporting event, with none of the careful framing that lets us actually enjoy and appreciate the dancer's movement. Taylor Swift does her best kittycat Moulin Rouge tribute, borne aloft on a catnip-sputtering crescent moon to introduce Idris Elba's Macavity (the ostensible villain of the piece) in alarmingly high pumps (and nothing else).

Which brings us to the film's visual effects, such as they are.

By all rights, Cats should have been an animated feature, whether computer-animated or, better yet, the quickly vanishing 2-D hand-drawn animation of Disney's senior classics. Animation would have suited the musical's plotless and episodic nature far more easily than an attempt to coax an audience into willingly suspending their disbelief that the cavorting humans on the screen are actual felines. And Cats was going to be an animated film until executive producer Steven Spielberg's Amblimation studios closed in the 1990s.

Tom Hooper's involvement began in 2016, and it was his determination that led to Cats being the thing that it is.

The decision to use live actors was always a risky concept, even isolated as they were by the lack of onscreen humans. As film is a literal medium, there was never any chance the audience would "forget" that they were watching people, as many audiences for the stage show claimed to have done. (This is akin to the sort of voluntary ignorance people experience when watching puppetry, for example -- although the unspoken audience/performer agreement with regards to puppetry often remains intact no matter what the medium -- even radio.)

There are only two reasons to make the film in this way: (1) To preserve and celebrate the dance elements of the piece; and (2) to make certain the audience knows which famous person is playing which cat.

Makeup effects have come a long way since Lon Chaney's tortuous virtuosity gave us the original Phantom of the Opera (1925) -- for the very same studio that would bring us Cats-- but makeup effects were eschewed in favor of "digital fur technology," as the press releases crowed.

"Digital Fur Technology" turned out to be digitally mapping the body of each performer and adding a layer of photorealistic "fur" to the actor, along with overly mobile ears and tails. Some people got paws, but as more than one reviewer has pointed out, these come and go with the whims (and overworked schedules) of the digital artists enslaved to apply this asinine treatment.

The post-production period for the film was optimistically short, and other effects houses were enlisted to aid in getting the film ready for release, which resulted in many unfinished shots getting into the final release print (rapidly replaced prints were turned around on the film's very opening weekend). Had the effects been "perfect" they still would have created the same disconcerting effect they had upon the release of Cats' teaser trailer: furry naked people with digitally removed genitalia and tails emerging from where tails typically do not emerge (bluntly, their anuses).

Somehow, a fur-covered naked Idris Elba is more naked than an actually naked Idris Elba would be. The obviously rushed graphic tooling also creates the feeling that someone will be actually naked if they move too fast for the computer to keep up. The illusion is never more than that, because one is constantly aware of its existence, like a weird animated overlay on the film. The artificiality of it ensures its conspicuousness.

Many of the songs do retain their charm, despite zero attempts made to bolster the vocals or even to re-orchestrate the very very 1980s synthesizer-heavy score (Cats was notoriously instrumental in the reduction Broadway orchestra size, resulting in a musician's strike at the time that forced a number of shows to close). The film occasionally gets out of its own way for a moment of clarity between cringes, but such moments are few and far between.

So. Was it right to make a movie of Cats?

Ask me again when they announce a movie of Starlight Express.

Notes on a Matinee: ROCKETMAN (2019)

(121m, Color / Directed by Dexter Fletcher / Written by Lee Hall / Music by Elton John, Lyrics by Bernie Taupin, "Pinball Wizard" by Pete Townshend / Starring: Taran Egerton, Jamie Bell, Richard Madden, Bryce Dallas Howard, Gemma Jones, Steven Mackintosh, Tom Bennett

Ah, the joys of the world of the musical biopic. 

Since cinema's earliest days, the biography has been one of the most popular genres. It allowed studios to brand a film instantly to a recognizable personality and gave its stars the opportunity to "stretch" by playing a famous individual and dragging willing audiences through their various trials and tribulations, from radium poisoning in the case of Marie Curie (Greer Garson, 1942, Madame Curie) to treating rabies (Paul Muni, 1936, The Story of Louis Pasteur).

The musical biopic offers even rarer treats: the opportunity to witness artistic creation itself, whether it's Mozart scratching out "Ah Tutti Contenti" from Figaro while noodling around with a billiard ball in Amadeus (1984) or Loretta Lynn finding simple inspiration in her own story in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980). The musical biopic has led to thrilling performances from unexpected places, like Gary Busey's uncanny turn in The Buddy Holly Story (1978), as well as some embarrassments, like Cary Grant's ridiculously concocted Cole Porter in Night and Day (1946).

Rocketman, unfortunately, lies in the netherworld between extremes. With its subject still very much alive and very much in control of his narrative, the film struggles to keep the highs high and the lows not too low. Substance abuse and sex addiction are name checked in the film's trope-laden rehab scenes -- the "story" is told from the point-of-view of John, mid-career high, attending group therapy sessions where he, of course, is the star. The film goes nowhere near the grimy aesthetic of Sid & Nancy (1986) or the Dexedrine-fueled mania of All That Jazz (1980), both films that, for better or worse, treated addiction and dependency like the diseases they are rather than annoyances to be ticked off a list.

This is at the heart of why the movie fails; it refuses to invest in anything other than the idea that this Elton John guy (Taran Egerton, trying valiantly) writes some pretty great songs, doesn't he? The film grudgingly checks off the landmarks as we pass them: absent/negligent father figure (check!), loving but promiscuous mother (check!), doting grandmother/sage figure there at just the right time (check!), and so on.

Incidents pile up on each other like many, many glitzy costumes tossed in a hamper. John sees a potential manager, who hands him an envelope of lyrics to compose to, as a test, by this Bernie Taupin fellow (a game and engaged Jamie Bell, who does this sort of thing seemingly effortlessly). Instantly they're writing hits, which gets them to America, which gets them famous, which gets the attention of Robb Stark--er, John Reid (Richard Madden).

Which leads to the least sexy sex scene between two objectively attractive people I've ever witnessed on screen, through no real fault of Madden or Egerton. Presumably the reason the film is rated R (boys kissing!), the scene is a clinical barrage of quick cuts (hand across a chest, thigh raised provocatively, lips parted in a sigh) that is as sexy as a pop-up ad for an erectile dysfunction medication. Perhaps it fails to ignite because, like the rest of the film, it seems to be a series of separate shots, pieced together like items on a list. 

Passion? Check!

The film shuffles on from there, with John booking bigger and bigger dates. Reid taking over as his manager implies something of a financial scandal, although nothing so much as to derail John's inevitable wake-up call that leads him to make accusatory calls to each of his parents, after blowing off a concert and before barreling into a therapy session in a sequined orange demon outfit (the film's meager attempt at a framing device).

The movie's entire lack of initiative is almost staggering. Howard, unrecognizable in a brunette wig, registers in the film's aftermath because she so perfectly matches the film's style that her failure to make an impression makes the impression. "Pinball Wizard," performed by John in Ken Russell's film of The Who's Tommy (1975) is reduced to a montage of hats and sunglasses (I'm not kidding). Which reminds me...

You might be wondering why I have to this point not commented on the musical numbers, when this is, after all, a musical biopic. 

The music is the reason the film exists in the first place-- all those hit songs. Performances at the Troubadour club in Los Angeles, shamelessly scrubbed into a well-lit immaculate sound stage presided over by an improbably wigged Tate Donovan. An L.A. garden party at "Mamma Cass's house" (Mamma Cass sold separately, one imagines). 1950s London streets imported from either Absolute Beginners (1986) or Detective Pikachu (2019), it's hard to say. The Cannes and Nice settings from John's own 80s music video for "I'm Still Standing." The musical numbers are mortared in between the dramatic scenes with minimal perfunctory changes to the lyrics to adjust the tone to the scene. They are also severely truncated, for the most part, and reduced to snippets, as if the film doesn't have time for them with so much story to tell.

It's an odd choice, and it doesn't work. It lends the film the air of a travel presentation -- you can see all these fabulous things, if you just go here! And "fabulous" is what the movie seems to have top-most on its mind. Production design and costuming are first-rate, with hair coming in a close second (so many variations on John's' expanding and contracting baldness, Egerton's scalp should get its own award). Makeup is a distant third -- its approach to old-age is entirely based on a system of eye-bags, judiciously employed.

Wait, what was I talking about? Oh, the music.

The film features some songs by Elton John and Bernie Taupin that are adequately performed. It was written by Lee Hall and directed by Dexter Fletcher.

See? It's as easy as checking off a list.

GODSPELL (1973)

(1973, Color) 103m. / Directed by David Greene / Music & Lyrics by Stephen Schwartz ("By My Side" written by Peggy Gordon & Jay Hamburger) / Screenplay by David Greene & John-Michael Tebelak / Starring Victor Garber, Katie Hanley, David Haskell, Merrell Jackson, Joanne Jonas, Robin Lamont, Gilmer McCormick, Jeffrey Mylett, Jerry Sroka, Lynne Thigpen

revised March 8, 2018

Playwright John-Michael Tebelak wrote the first script of Godspell in 1970 as a master’s thesis while he was enrolled at Carnegie Mellon University. Originally, the show's lyrics were taken from the Episcopal Hymnal and these were given new melodies by the original cast members. This version of the show was produced in New York for a limited run in 1971. It attracted the attention of producers, who saw value in the play (especially in light of the success of the previous year’s Jesus Christ Superstar). Composer-lyricist Steven Schwartz was hired to write new songs (only “By My Side,” with music by Peggy Gordon, lyric by Jay Hamburger, was retained from the original run), and the show enjoyed a very long run Off-Broadway before finally transferring to Broadway in 1976 for a final year of the initial production, clocking in with an impressive run of over 2,600 performances.  

In contrast to Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Tim Rice’s relatively darker Superstar, Godspell presents the story of Christ (the show is self-described as “a musical based on the gospel according to St. Matthew”) in a much freer, extemporaneous tone. Godspell focuses primarily on the parables of Jesus, and uses theatrical language (incorporating elements of pantomime, vaudeville, etc.) to keep the tone lightly comic until the final section dealing with Jesus’s betrayal and crucifixion.

The original production of Godspell featured the cast cavorting on a set representing a large children’s playground, but this is left fairly open to interpretation with each production. The players paint each others' faces with makeup (doodling flowers, stars, etc. on each other) after “Save the People” to indicate they had become followers of Jesus. Jesus is the only named character in the show. The actor playing Judas frequently doubles for John the Baptist in the opening section, though he is never named directly, and the rest of the cast refer to each other by their own actual first names. 

As the show’s story reaches the events leading to the crucifixion, the cast removes their face paint, usually during a reprise of “Day By Day,” the show’s breakout hit song. The song became so popular (it reached #7 on Billboard’s pop chart) that it is now regularly included in the hymnals of many churches. Because of its open nature and minimal prop and set requirements, Godspell is almost always running somewhere, and has proven remarkably resilient and open to reinterpretation, especially compared to its contemporaries. 

Since Godspell did not reach Broadway until 1976, it was ineligible for the 1971 Tony Awards, although Stephen Schwartz did win the Drama Desk Award for both Most Promising Composer and Most Promising Lyricist for the original production, and Tebelak, who also directed the production, received the award for Most Promising Director.  Susan Tsu also won a Drama Desk Award for Most Promising Costume Design.  When the show finally transferred to Broadway, Schwartz was Godspell’s sole nominee, for Best Original Score, but the Tony went to that year’s runaway hit, Annie. 

Song list:

Tower Of Babble (Prologue)
Prepare Ye The Way Of The Lord
Save The People
Day By Day
Learn Your Lessons Well
Oh Bless The Lord, My Soul
All For The Best
All Good Gifts
Light Of The World
Learn Your Lessons Well (Reprise)
Turn Back, O Man
Alas For You
By My Side*
We Beseech Thee
Beautiful City**
Day By Day (Reprise)
On The Willows
Finale

BLUE indicates numbers removed for the film
* written by Peggy Gordon & Jay Hamburger
** written for the film

Godspell was released to movie theatres in 1973, and once again found itself being compared to Jesus Christ Superstar. Director Norman Jewison’s bloated big-budget film version of Superstar completely overshadowed Columbia's smaller release of the more intimate and modestly-budgeted Godspell.

Only the songs “Tower Of Babble” prologue and “Learn Your Lessons Well” were removed for the film, leaving the score almost completely intact. “Beautiful City” replaced “We Beseech Thee,” and was immediately available for inclusion in all future productions of the show. As if to demonstrate just how loose the structure of Godspell is, "Beautiful City" may be inserted into the score (or not) at whichever point the director of that particular stage production might deem appropriate.

Television director David Greene (“Roots”), who co-wrote the screenplay with Tebelak, opted to present Godspell in straightforward musical fashion, and the film expands on the show’s playground esthetic, using the entire island of Manhattan as the setting in which Jesus (the Canadian cast’s Victor Garber) and his followers act out the teachings and parables of Christ. Action takes place all over the island, incorporating the Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park's Bethesda Fountain, the Cherry Lane Theatre, the Andrew Carnegie Mansion, Lincoln Center and Times Square, among others.

Character actor Lynne Thigpen had her first film role in Godspell. A prolific New York theatre actor, Thigpen later gained widespread attention as the mysterious DJ in Walter HIll's The Warriors, but younger audiences are most likely to recognize her from her role as the Chief on the children's game show Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? The film’s John/Judas, Haskell would continue to work in theatre and television until his untimely death in 2000, and Jerry Sroka continues to appear in roles on various television series. Robin Lamont, whose recording of “Day by Day” from the original cast recording made the song a hit, became an attorney in the 1990’s, and is now a District Attorney in New York. Katie Hanley (the lead vocal on “By My Side”) would later turn up in Xanadu.

Garber would go on to more prominent success, notably creating the role of Anthony Hope in the first Broadway production of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, as Captain Smith in James Cameron’s Titanic, as Jennifer Garner’s father on the television series Alias, and as one half of the DC superhero Firestorm (it's complicated) in the TV series Legends of Tomorrow.

After a prologue that features Haskell calling the players from their daily New York lives, the population of Manhattan vanishes from the film, leaving only the cast on view.  Godspell manages the surprising feat of remaining playful and ebullient throughout, mostly because of its very able cast, who manage to portray guilelessness without tipping over into "precious" territory. Garber calls on them to act out various parables such as “The Good Samaritan” or “The Prodigal Son” as New York City effortlessly provides striking background visuals (beginning in an outdoor playground, then moving on to the locations mentioned above, and also memorably atop the still-under-construction World Trade Center towers). Unlike the consistently murky exteriors of The Wiz (1978), Godspell is almost entirely lit with natural light, streaming through windows and bouncing off glass exteriors - confining the action of the film to a single day.

In the film’s final section, as in the play, the action returns to the playground where the film began, as the events of the crucifixion are acted out in stylized fashion, with Garber having his arms tied in cruciform with red sashes to a chain-link fence. The red sash metaphor would later turn up as a stand-in for blood in "The Cell Block Tango" when Bob Fosse staged Chicago in 1975.

Schwartz, creating his first musical theatre score, has composed the songs in a wide range of styles, from the burlesque “Turn Back, O Man” to the plaintive folk rhythms of "On the Willows.” The casting of theatrically-trained actors pays off abundantly, as the cast does full justice to the quality of the songs in both performance and voice. The movie relies entirely on the cast to do its heavy lifting (there are virtually no props or sets, barring a few items plucked from handy carts or bins).

After Godspell, Schwartz would go on to write the scores for two more hits in a row, Bob Fosse’s Pippin and The Magic Show (the latter of which was a showcase for illusionist Doug Henning), though winning a Tony for neither, before authoring the notorious flops The Baker’s Wife (writing both music and lyrics) and Rags (lyrics, to a score by Annie’s Charles Strouse).  Schwartz would fare better in the 1990’s, when he teamed with composer Alan Menken to write lyrics for two Disney films, Pocahontas (winning Academy Awards for Best Original Song – for “Colors of the Wind” – and Best Original Song Score) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  When he was released from composer and lyricist duties for Disney’s subsequent Mulan, Schwartz accepted an offer to compose music and lyrics for DreamWorks Animation’s flagship effort, The Prince of Egypt, winning an Academy Award for its central ballad “If You Believe.”  Schwartz navigated a very successful return to Broadway in 2003 with Wicked, though the Tony Award went to that year’s Avenue Q. Schwartz had the last laugh, though - Avenue Q closed in 2009, and Wicked (as of this writing) is still running.

Unseen or extremely hard to find on home video for many years, Godspell attained a sort of reputation as an overlooked masterpiece in the 1980s, due in large part to Roger Ebert’s oft-reprinted effusive review in his annual movie compendium. In addition to extolling the virtues of the film’s lack of pretense and its naturalistic casting of “real” people as the players, Ebert was so captivated by the film that he opines that face painting should become commonplace among “young people.”

While the film itself is naturally dated (it's very hard to overlook the distinct late-70s vibe of the clothing, hair, and slang of the cast entirely -- though it must be said that it is never inauthentic), it has nonetheless held up extremely well. There's a definite "Up With People" quality about it (to quote a friend of mine), but it never tips over into saccharine territory. Its score may not be rooted in the ever-popular cynicism of Superstar, but Godspell succeeds on its own terms.

It is interesting to note that neither Godspell nor Superstar address the resurrection in their respective tellings, although Schwartz's musical ends on a decidedly more upbeat note of hope. A note from Schwartz in the book of the show emphasizes that Godspell is about love, and a community built as a result of the influence of Jesus, not whether or not Jesus himself will be resurrected.

And those are the kinds of songs, of love, and of community, that we will always need to hear.

A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC (1977)

(1977, Color) 124m. / Directed by Harold Prince / Music & Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim / Screenplay by Hugh Wheeler / Starring Elizabeth Taylor, Diana Rigg, Len Cariou, Lesley-Anne Down, Hermione Gingold, Laurence Guittard, Christopher Guard, Lesley Dunlop, Chloe Franks

In 1955, Ingmar Bergman's comedy Smiles of a Summer Night gained him both his first international success, and his rise to prominence. Now, Bergman is widely regarded as one of the finest filmmakers of all time. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the worldwide embrace of the film helped to pave the way for the innovative Swedish director to gain the carte blanche to continue to create such further masterpieces as The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Fanny and Alexander, Persona, and so many others. Though almost all his films are imbued with comic touches, Smiles of a Summer Night is Bergman’s only outright comedy, a bedroom farce laced with wit and style. A case could be made that his television film of Mozart's The Magic Flute would qualify, but it is equal parts opera and a filmed stage performance.

For their third collaboration as director and composer respectively, Harold Prince and Stephen Sondheim turned to the film as the inspiration for what would become A Little Night Music. Bergman's film would seem a natural source, in keeping with the sophistication they brought to Broadway in their previous efforts, Company and Follies. For the score, Sondheim decided to keep all the songs in waltz time (3/4) or variations thereof, and there is no percussion in the orchestra, in keeping with chamber orchestras of the early 20^th century.

The plot remains close to that of the film: In Sweden, in 1900, Fredrik Egerman, a middle-aged lawyer, takes his young, virginal second wife Anne to the theatre to see a play featuring a famous actress, Desiree Armfeldt, who had also been the lawyer’s mistress prior to his recent remarriage. When Anne learns of this affair, she flees home. Egerman rekindles the flirtation with Desiree. Complicating matters are the presence of Desiree’s current lover, a jealous Count, his spurned wife, and Fredrik’s young adult son, home from college, not to mention their bawdy maid, Petra, and Desiree’s young daughter Fredrika. A “Greek chorus” chamber quartet offers wry commentary through songs like “Remember?” and “The Sun Won’t Set.”

The original cast featured Len Cariou as Egerman, Glynis Johns (most well known as Mrs. Banks from Disney’s Mary Poppins), and Hermione Gingold as Desiree’s mother. The show premiered on February 25, 1973, and ran for 601 performances. It won the Tony Award for Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical (Hugh Wheeler), Best Actress in a Musical (Johns), Best Featured Actress in a Musical (Patricia Elliott), and Best Costume Design for a Musical (Florence Klotz). Boris Aronson and Tharon Musser were nominated for Scenic Design and Lighting, respectively, and Gingold lost the Tony to co-star Elliott. Len Cariou was nominated for Best Actor in a Musical, but lost to Ben Vereen that year’s Pippin, for which Bob Fosse won Best Director of a Musical.

Song List

Overture

Night Waltz

Now

Later

Soon

The Glamorous Life

Remember?

You Must Meet My Wife

Liaisons

In Praise of Women

Every Day a Little Death

A Weekend in the Country

The Sun Won’t Set

It Would Have Been Wonderful

Perpetual Anticipation

Send in the Clowns

The Miller’s Son

Finale

BLUE indicates Broadway songs removed for the film version, RED indicates songs altered considerably from their original form, GREEN indicates songs added specifically for the film version

Smiles of a Summer Night is such a perfect example of the bedroom farce that its most astonishing attribute is that it’s not French. A Little Night Music, onstage, is more a thoughtful rumination on its themes rather than a direct retelling of Bergman’s film. In musicalizing the film, Sondheim gets inside the characters’ heads and plays out their foibles and eccentricities in ways that only the theatre can get away with.

A prime example can be found the early musical triptych of “Now” (sung by Egerman), “Later” (sung by his son Henryk), and “Soon” (sung by the 18 year-old Anne). In Bergman, the entirety of the events enacted in this trio of songs (becoming a fugue in the last portion) takes less than a minute (the son is unhappy, Egerman suggests he and his wife take a nap before attending the theatre, and he accidentally whispers Desiree’s name as he’s falling asleep). In Sondheim, the same sequence is an exquisite musical montage that goes on for more than ten minutes.

This goes toward explaining why the film version of A Little Night Music feels supremely long and tedious. Every interior moment is procrastinated into song. Even jettisoning numbers like “The Miller’s Son,” “In Praise of Women,” and all of the Greek chorus numbers, the film runs nearly twenty minutes longer than the breezy Bergman original (yes, “breezy” and “Bergman” in the same sentence). Also gone (and largely absent from the stage play) are the small touches of peasant life that serve as a counterpoint to the middle and upper-class characters, leavening the farce with some well-placed satire.

Even more conspicuously absent is Sweden – the film has transplanted the action to Austria for some reason (it certainly isn’t for the scenery – the film is trapped almost entirely on some embarrassingly chintzy looking sets and a faded park). For good measure, Egerman’s son’s name has been changed from Henryk to Eryk.

If these alterations indicate a sea change, the entire enterprise is ultimately torpedoed as a result of the casting of the film’s Desiree, Elizabeth Taylor. The casting of a Movie Star in the role shifts the cast dynamic drastically, particularly since Prince seems unwilling or unable to incorporate Taylor into the ensemble nature of the rest of the cast; she remains a singular presence, akin to watching a production of A Chorus Line starring Ethel Merman. As a result of Taylor's status, the film is forced to begin with a lengthy discussion of her attributes, as Fredrika sings a newly rewritten version of “The Glamorous Life.” A Little Night Music now becomes about Desiree without justifying such a change.

Sondheim produces a minor masterpiece in the newly rewritten song, but it’s an unwise shift in focus away from the other characters so early on. Taylor also now barges her way into the one large number in which Desiree should be heard of and not seen, the film’s closest thing to cinema, “A Weekend in the Country.” What should be a galvanizing song seeing all the diverse cast converge on the Armfeldt family estate (invited or not) gets unnecessarily protracted by interruptive interludes positing Desiree’s stiffly delivered treatise on how to break up a marriage to the not-at-all-appalled Fredrika. One wonders if the oft-divorced Taylor had any special insight into this particular aspect of a famous actress scheming to shatter a family – but she’s above sharing such insights with the audience.

Of all the actors who acquit themselves admirably to this leaden affair, Rigg and Downs come off the most naturally, which makes sense in that they (Taylor aside) had had the most on-camera experience. Gingold, usually a vivacious presence onscreen (Gigi, The Music Man) is given little to do but spout portentous quotations at odd intervals, since she’s been robbed of her solo number, “Liaisons,” which would have stopped the movie even deader in its tracks, at any rate. It’s particularly painful to see her during the oddly abbreviated dinner sequence, in which characters arbitrarily bicker, shout at one another, and throw drinks, without the slightest awareness that their esteemed hostess is sitting at the table with them.

Which brings us to the most glaring omission the film version of A Little Night Music contains: gone is the central catalyst to the characters' loss of inhibitions as the night "smiles" upon the gathered guests. A toast made using the specially saved (and possibly magical) wine that Madame Armfeldt makes. The bottle is brought out, but Eryk (Henryk?) storms away from the table, and takes the camera with him, apparently.

The rest of the movie collapses upon itself distressingly, as director Prince fumbles through the rest of the plot points as carelessly as if he’s flipping through a deck of playing cards. The less that can be said of Taylor’s particular rendition of “Send in the Clowns,” the musical’s big breakout hit and Sondheim’s most famous song, the better. Taylor acquits herself better in the slight duet "You Must Meet My Wife," earlier on, but the later portions of the score are a bit beyond her range. To be fair, though, everyone involved should have been aware that this would be the case, as nobody has ever considered Taylor a musical performer.

Cariou, in the leading role, is a fine singer and actor, but he's done no favors by leaden dialogue, stiff-looking costumes, a romantically disinclined leading lady, and the fact that his character spends a good deal more time reacting to events than he does instigating them. 

Prince shoulders the primary responsibility for the film's inertia, although the source material itself (the musical, not the Bergman film) consistently proves resistant to adaptation. Upon examination, the musical A Little Night Music is less a faithful retelling of the Bergman film than it is a deconstruction of it -- as mentioned earlier in considering "Now / Later / Soon", the musical numbers are generally introspective examinations of moments, rather than narratively propulsive songs. This is why "A Weekend in the Country" seems so much more dynamic -- it is about an action that is happening, rather than something recounted or an emotion experienced. 

The very theatrical nature of Sondheim's scores frequently present these sorts of dilemmas for film. To take a more recent example, similar narrative problems pop up in the film adaptation of Into the Woods (2014), most strikingly in "The Steps of the Palace," where a few awkward changes of past-to-present tense in the lyric does less to alleviate the song's ruminative nature than it does to turn the scene (Cinderella fleeing the ball) into a moment of a character inexplicably narrating her own actions.

Is A Little Night Music worth seeking out? If you are already a Sondheim fan, then probably, if only for the opportunity to see the rarely staged musical. Or a Sondheim musical itself -- America's premier Broadway composer has remained consistently difficult to adapt for film, and A Little Night Music unfortunately represents a glaring example of why this is the case. Most of the remaining music is performed well, especially Downs and Riggs in their duet "Every Day A Little Death." The print circulating now on DVD appears to be taken from the same ½” video master used to create the Magnetic Video release in the 1980s, and is a dreary, faded affair that only exacerbates the colorless art direction and lackadaisical cinematography. 

Of more interest is Prince's oddball black comedy Something For Everyone (1970), but good luck finding a copy of that anywhere.

DREAMGIRLS (2006)

Originally published August 3, 2007

(Colour, 2006) 130m. / Directed by Bill Condon / Music by Henry Krieger, Lyrics by Tom Eyen / Starring Jamie Foxx, Beyonce Knowles, Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Hudson, Danny Glover, Anika Noni Rose (DreamWorks / Paramount)

The musical that eventually became Dreamgirls began its existence as a vehicle for Nell Carter, who had earlier appeared in The Dirtiest Show In Town for writer Tom Eyen and composer Henry Krieger.  In 1978, a workshop was held for the Public Theatre’s Joseph Papp, and Carter was joined by Sheryl Lee Ralph and Loretta Devine, but ultimately Carter became unavailable when she joined the cast of the daytime drama Ryan’s Hope.  The project became renewed with the interest of Michael Bennett, who saw in the show a perfect vehicle for his film-like direction and choreography.  The history of Bennett’s involvement with the show and its subsequent workshops and drastic re-workings through to the triumphant opening night are well documented, and would take up too much space to recount here with any accuracy.  Gospel singer Jennifer Holliday  was eventually persuaded to take on the role of Effie (after the part was expanded to suit her), and the show opened on December 20, 1981.

For Dreamgirls, Michael Bennett engineered the show to utilize his trademark fluid staging and the almost intuitive-seeming choreography of his earlier work (most especially evident in Follies, Company, and A Chorus Line) and here Bennett created a truly near-cinematic experience.  Massive moving light scaffolds onstage were incorporated into the choreography, enabling scene changes and, in one case, a full costume change in mid-scene, to mirror the effects of fade-outs, camera moves and cuts.  The evening was almost entirely through-sung, and Bennett’s dynamic staging kept the show in constant motion, only stopping for intermission.

In its initial run, Dreamgirls ran 1,521 performances and scored a whopping 13 Tony nominations, taking home wins for Best Book (Tom Eyen), Best Actor (Ben Harney), Best Actress (Jennifer Holliday), Best Featured Actor (Cleavant Derricks), Best Lighting Design (Tharon Musser) and Best Choreography (Michael Bennett and Michael Peters).  The 1981 season was also the year of another choreographer/visionary, and Tommy Tune’s production of Maury Yeston’s Nine, a musical based loosely on Federico Fellini’s 8 ½, ran away with the awards for Best Musical, Best Score and Best Director, among others.  Other musicals in the running for the major awards of note that year were  Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and the flops The First (with a book by film critic Joel Siegel) and the abortive 14th century-set rock opera Marlowe.

In both its stage and screen incarnations, Dreamgirls is the story of the rise of the girl group The Dreamettes, led by the outspoken Effie White (Holliday), backed by the beautiful Deena Jones (Sheryl Lee Ralph) and their friend Lorrell (Loretta Devine).  After losing the amateur night contest at the Apollo Theatre due to the machinations of Cadillac salesman Curtis Taylor, Jr. (Harney), the girls get their big break singing backup for soul singer James “Thunder” Early (Derricks).  The show tracks the rise of the girls as they break off to become a solo act and, due to Taylor’s desire to “cross over” onto the mainstream pop charts, force Effie to cede the microphone to Deena.  After a tumultuous scene which culminates in the rafter-rattling declaration “I Am Telling You I’m Not Going,” Effie leaves the group, now called The Dreams, and the second half of the show follows the leads as they pursue their own dreams of career and relationships.

Song List:

I’m Looking for Something, Baby

Goin’ Downtown
Takin’ the Long Way Home
Move (You’re Steppin’ on My Heart)
Fake Your Way to the Top
Cadillac Car
Big*
Steppin’ to the Bad Side
Steppin’ to the Bad Side
Party, Party
Love You I Do**
I Want You, Baby
Family
Dreamgirls
Press Conference
Heavy
Walkin’ Down the Strip
It’s All Over
And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going
Dreams Medley
I Am Changing
Vogue Sequence
When I First Saw You
Patience***
Ain’t No Party
Perfect World**
I Meant You No Harm
The Rap
I Miss You, Old Friend
One Night Only
One Night Only (Disco Version)
Listen****
I’m Somebody
Hard to Say Good-Bye
Dreamgirls (Reprise)

*The intro recitative and opening lines of “Cadillac Car” have been reduced to a jazzy background instrumental.

** Lyrics by Siedah Garrett

***Lyrics by Willie Reale

**** Additional music by Scott Cutler & Beyonce Knowles, and lyrics by Anne Preven

BLUE indicates Broadway songs removed for the film version; RED indicates songs altered considerably from their original form; GREEN indicates songs added specifically for the film version.

The long-gestating film version of Dreamgirls finally started to become a reality in the wake of the popular and critical success of the film version of Chicago (2002).  Producer David Geffen, who had been involved with the original Bennett production (and who historically has received the brunt of the criticism for producing the savagely-cut original cast recording), was reportedly holding out the go-ahead for the film until he found the right vision for capitalizing on the show’s possibilities.  There had also been long-circulating rumors that Diana Ross, who rose to fame as the lead singer of The Supremes and was supposedly angered at the parallels between her story and that of the musical, was using her considerable influence to ensure that Dreamgirls would never reach the screen.

Geffen found his creative voice in the screenwriter of Chicago, Bill Condon, who had also directed the respected and moderate successes Gods & Monsters and Kinsey.  A name-brand cast of prominent actors was quickly lined up, with Jamie Foxx as shifty Cadillac dealer-turned-manager Curtis Taylor, Jr., former Destiny’s Child singer/aspiring actress Beyonce Knowles as Deena, Tony-winning actress Anika Noni Rose as Lorrell, Eddie Murphy as James “Thunder” Early and Danny Glover as his long-suffering manager/friend Marty.  A much-ballyhooed talent search went underway to find the “perfect” Effie White, a search that finally ended when the most commercially-obvious choice was made.  The part went to Jennifer Hudson, who had achieved popularity (if not the prize) on television’s insanely over-watched celebration of musical mediocrity, “American Idol.”

Dreamgirls was well-received critically, and was a moderate box office success, but was hardly the breakout hit that many industry insiders had predicted.  The film received eight Academy Award nominations:  Supporting Actor (Murphy), Supporting Actress (Hudson), Best Costumes, Best Art Direction, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Song nominations for “Listen,” “Patience,” and “Love You I Do.”  But the film walked away with only one win, for Hudson.  Despite some talk of a backlash against the film and its hard-hitting Oscar voting campaign, the general consensus (even including Condon, according to comments he made to The New York Times) was that the film got what it deserved.  Many believed that Murphy, who had seemed a sure thing going into the awards, sabotaged his own campaign by allowing his upcoming release Norbit (featuring the actor in grotesque drag) to be heavily promoted during the voting period.  In the end, Dreamgirls, which had been eagerly awaited by theatre lovers for over twenty years, played in cinemas and was quickly relegated to home video.

To anyone who has experienced the stage version, Dreamgirls offers a number of difficult challenges to adaptation, and perhaps no film version save one involving all of the original talents combined could have come close to recapturing that same experience on film.  Unfortunately, at the time the show was packing the aisles every night, the American movie musical was truly on the skids, having suffered a string of high-profile disasters in the wake of the phenomenon that was Grease.  Eager studios, hoping to cash in on what they hoped would be a wave, instantly crippled the genre with disco duds and theatrical misconceptions like The Wiz, Grease 2, Stayin’ Alive and Xanadu.  Not that these films are without merit, but their failure at the box office could hardly have been misread.  

After Chicago scored with both movie audiences and critics, however, the hunt was on for the next big-budget class act musical, and Dreamgirls would, on paper, look to be a most obvious candidate.  Particularly attractive to producers still uneasy about how a true musical (with spontaneous integrated singing and dancing in a non-performance setting) might be perceived by modern audiences is Dreamgirls’ mostly stage-bound story.  With every character existing either onstage or backstage, there seemed little risk in “opening up” certain aspects and keeping the musical moments strictly tied to realistic performances by the characters.  Hence, the Dreamgirls finally got their shot at the big screen.

Condon’s Dreamgirls hits major snags right out of the starting gate (not including the error of allowing the treacly DreamWorks logo music to open the film instead of the show’s distinctive cowbell).  The stage show opens with the “legendary talent contest” at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and our three heroines are late because they have missed a train from Chicago.  For the film, we are at the fictional Detroit Theater (in, one assumes, Detroit), and the girls are late because Deena couldn’t sneak out until her mother fell asleep.  This renders Effie’s complaint about being tired not only completely nonsensical, but also plays into the Deena-centric version of the story the film is going to run with for the next two hours.  Which also raises another point:  on stage, Effie’s diva-like behavior and huge personality dominated the show, even though she remains off stage for a good portion of the second act.  In the film, when Effie is off-screen, she is forgotten.  

With the introduction of Marty (Glover) chasing the fleeing backup singers for “Thunder” Early (Murphy), the film tosses out the first of the musical score’s through-running recitatives and musical dialogues, all of which offer a counterpoint to concurrently performing “on-stage” moments.  Here Condon lays out the track he intends to follow for this adaptation – rather than offering us the “wall of sound” approach of the stage play, where all of the musical moments overlapped and fed into each other, Condon will stop the music and drop in straight dialogue scenes as exposition for what even on stage seemed a bit hackneyed and clichéd.  

This approach to Dreamgirls leaves the film wide open to the two very valid criticisms leveled against it:  (1) this is not a new story (see the vibrant, low-budget Sparkle, for one example of how this tale’s been told before) and (2) these songs in no way approach the authentic style and resonance of their true-life Motown counterpoints.  What made these scenes and songs work onstage was not the quality of the music (which is fine), but the energy and flow of the performances, which hardly stopped except for a handful of dialogue moments.  Condon threatens to echo the fatal errors of Sir Richard Attenborough’s depressingly misguided adaptation of another Michael Bennett triumph, A Chorus Line, which also relegated musical moments to the background in order to “flesh out” the most obvious and least interesting bits of dramatic action.

This decision also introduces new flaws into the musical as a whole, in that Condon has now denied a musical voice to a major character, that of Curtis (Foxx).  Reducing him to a purely speaking presence obliterates anything remotely appealing about a character who exists only to cause conflict between Effie and Deena, and also makes for an awkward moment late in the film when he must (because there’s nobody else who can) inexplicably sing “When I First Saw You.”  The opening lines of “Cadillac Car,” and what makes the number a galvanizing experience, are boiled down into tedious banter, and the number’s big laugh, the co-opting of the song by a white bubblegum pop group, comes across as an afterthought.

With Knowles the top-billed actress in the cast, Condon is forced to unwisely shift the focus (especially during the flaccid second half of the movie) toward Deena, and the film attempts to ennoble her character in order to make her more sympathetic to the audience.  Ironically, this robs Knowles of the chance to create a more interesting (i.e., flawed) character, and spoils what is arguably her finest performance to date by letting her run away with the film just when the audience’s focus should be entirely on Effie’s plight.

These are just a few examples of why the film never truly takes flight.  Murphy delivers a strong and moving performance as Early, but his musical through-line of predestined tragedy has been removed, along with the haunting “Show biz… that’s just show biz” refrain that runs through the Broadway score.  Rose, an outstanding performer who won a Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her work in Caroline, Or Change, is robbed her big emotional moment, the pay-off to her unfulfilled relationship with Early (and a guaranteed show-stopper) “Ain’t No Party,” and all she’s left with the hollow single refrain from the song:  “Lorrell and Jimmy are through.”  Hudson, the film’s newcomer, earned media attention for her powerhouse vocals as Effie, no big surprise to anyone who had seen her television performances.  But Hudson never truly inhabits the character, and when she is left adrift in speaking scenes, the lack of direction given to her acting performance (of which this is one of her first) is impossible to ignore.

It is here that I want to digress a bit to discuss a trend that's been emergent in movie musicals post-Chicago. In adapting Kander and Ebb's retelling of the Roxie Hart story, the decision was made to confine all the musical numbers to a stage environment, whether actual (the nightclub of the opening sequence) or imagined, as various characters imagine the songs as part of their own respective star turns. Having musical numbers that expressly take place inside a character's imagination is hardly a new innovation (a notable early example of this is the sprawling "Broadway Melody" sequence of 1952's Singin' in the Rain). Ken Russell's film of Sandy Wilson's The Boy Friend makes extensive use of the device, giving us reinterpretations of what's being performed in the ramshackle titular production through the points of view of many of the performers, as well as a Hollywood movie director in the audience.

In these earlier instances, this was being used for narrative novelty, providing added variety and production value to numbers and to justify unusually expansive staging beyond the parameters of the established scene. Nowadays (to borrow an expression from Chicago), this sort of storytelling gymnastics is being used to underline a more troubling trend, which marks the emergence of what I like to call "the apologist musical."

The apologist musical sprang into existence as a result of nervous studio executives, clinging valiantly to the poor box office returns for The Wiz, Xanadu, et al. as an example that audiences "can't relate" to musicals any more, and find them "unrealistic" or stupid. They still want to make money off these properties, but hopefully without too much singing. Musicals like Dreamgirls and Les Miserables have made tons of money worldwide on their stage productions, and feature films offer the sweet promise of having that bankable show run forever with the same peerless cast-- all the studio has to do is reissue it again in every new media format that appears, but only if they can figure out a way to make them more realistic.

This concept, as mind-boggling as it is, explains the guiding force behind the decision to reduce Dreamgirls to a drama with some songs in it. It ignores the fact that what makes a show a hit is its ability to create its own world, with its own rules, including music that may or may not seem to come out of nowhere. Watching a musical tie itself into knots to justify the very existence of a song can be a tortuous experience, while a genuine musical embraces its own nature -- that's why nobody questions the validity of, say, something like South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut's "Mountain Town" opening number.

Which is all by way of saying that all of the omissions and hollow dialogue replacements are symptomatic of Dreamgirls being reduced to an apologist musical.  Once again, we are faced with a musical embarrassed of its own nature, awkwardly couching its musical moments into some sort of "realism" and cowering from the suggestion of any inner life.

The carefully orchestrated musical tapestry of the show has been cut away, leaving only a string of songs which can do nothing except reveal how sub-par they are to any audience inherently familiar with the true Motown sound.  The irrelevant “Patience,” a song devised to soften up Deena’s character even more, seems like something that might have been tuned in from the theatre next door, rather than anything relating to what should be the story of a girl group of the 1960s or 1970s.

This makes it sound as if there’s nothing to appreciate, musically, in the score for Dreamgirls, which is anything but the case.  The score is run through and through with the appropriated rhythms and beats of the sounds of the era, and several numbers (“Steppin’ to the Bad Side,” “I Am Changing,” “Hard to Say Good-Bye” and “One Night Only”) are exceptional in the way they serve as the characters’ performance songs and simultaneously comment on the action.  The songs are all fine Broadway songs, but no one will ever mistake them for anything the Supremes ever recorded.  This is why the score suffers without its supporting musical context; as a whole the show is a musical fable, and the film literalizes the score to a dangerous degree.

In the end, Dreamgirls is a serviceable film, with admirable talents involved in translating the story to the screen.  What it is not, however, is a great film musical.  In skirting the trappings of the genre and playing to perceived notions of what an audience will or will not accept from a musical, the movie fails to bring what was best about the show to life.  There is one moment, though, early in the “Fake Your Way to the Top” number, that hints at what the film could have been.  Early bangs out the intro to the song on a piano as the Dreamettes gather around to learn what they are going to have to perform.  As they’re rehearsing, the camera swings around them and suddenly they are on-stage, in front of the cheering crowd, performing.  It is a magical moment, serving the song and the story.  The scene then dissolves into a montage sequence of the girls on the road with Early, and we’re back to traditional film language again… but oh, for that moment, there were no apologies necessary.