A few of my favorite things…..

About a week ago I sat down to watch “Mamma Mia"!”, the recently adapted movie musical starring MERYL and featuring music by the God’s of perfectly crafted pop:  Bjorn and Benny of ABBA fame.  I mean, this movie is the top DVD seller of the year even surpassing “The Dark Knight” and hosts of well meaning friends and acquaintances said it was a must see.  Couldn’t be all bad, right?  Meryl, Pierce, Stellan, Christine, Julie, Colin, Amanda, add sparkly jumpsuits, a chorus of men in wet suits and flippers, and a sunny Mediterranean village perched on a rocky hillside and you’ve got movie magic, right?

Oh Lord, was I wrong.  By the end of it, if I had seen Meryl writhe on some rooftop or listen to Christine Baranski and Julie Walters cackle over their martini glasses or see another group of hot teenage stars cavort across a ridge or jump down a ladder or leap down a hillside, I would have screamed.  In fact the more I think about this movie, the more it infuriates me.  Don’t get me wrong, towards the end I started to have a little bit of fun, I mean I’m not that hopelessly jaded, but seriously, the whole thing added up to one big sunny and happy atrocity.

Now I feel somewhat guilty for not enjoying “Mamma Mia!”.  Whenever someone eagerly asks me how I liked it, I almost hate to let them down.  They just seem so invested in me having enjoyed it.  And I certainly don’t want to throw a wet blanket on their enthusiasm for the film, so I kind of stumble around a bit, complimenting individual actors on their performances, saying things like “Actually I kind of liked Pierce Brosnan’s performance.  The fact he couldn’t really sing, made it ever so charming”.

So in order to prove that I do, in fact, appreciate the genre of the movie musical (in fact, when done right, I down right LOVE it), I’ve compiled my own top 10 list of “My Favorite Movie Musicals”.  Notice I didn’t say “The 10 Best Movie Musicals”.  I’ll leave that to our very own cultural imperialists:  AFI.  These are simply 10 movie musicals that for various reasons I have come to adore.  So here goes:

10.  WEST SIDE STORY

From the opening whistles to the final gongs, this film is just what I like in a movie musical:  real drama, high energy dance numbers, athleticism, a pair of lovers you NEED to end up together and some of the most beautiful music ever written for a musical (Thanks Leonard and Stephen!).  And I’m a sucker for a musical with a tragic ending.  Hmm, now if Meryl had fallen off a craggy peak into the Mediterranean, we could talk.

9.  EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU

Woody Allen’s musical send up of the romantic dalliances of the upper crust Manhattan set came at a time when the movie musical was all but dead.  It made me believe in the genre again, simply because Allen turned the genre on its head.  It’s always hard for some people to see actors suddenly break into song, and then on top of that, to buy into the illusion that they have perfect voices.  Not the cast of “Everyone Says I Love You”.  The “Making Whoopee” number is side splitting.  But when Goldie Hawn dances into the air and over Woody Allen’s head on the banks of the Seine, I’m spellbound by the beauty of what it all means:  that  only in movie musicals are such things possible.

8.  SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS

Julie Newmar? Check.  A character named Dorcas?  Check.  Birds flying into the cheesy painted backdrops?  Check.  One of the most stunning dance sequences to ever hit the big screen?  Check.  Kicking the big budgeted and studio-favored “Briagdoon”’s butt at the box office?  BINGO!

7.  SINGING IN THE RAIN

Every time this one comes on television, I cannot help but sit and watch it.  And Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds and Gene Kelly hoofing it in the wee hours of the morning in perfect precision during “Good Mornin’” is movie musical perfection.  Oh, and you gotta love Lena.

6.  EVITA

I love an underdog.  So imagine my glee when I found myself cheering on an underdog (Madonna) playing an underdog (Eva Peron).  Her perfomance in this film is completely underrated, and Antonia Banderas kills it as Che.  Stunning filmmaking.  Oh and another tragic ending.  I’m starting to see a disturbing pattern.  In myself.

5.  DANCER IN THE DARK

Musical or anti-musical?  Who knows?  And I don’t even really care.  While this is not for everyone, Lars Von Trier’s Dogma 95 inflected musical starring my girl Bjork as the nearly blind Selma affected me so deeply that I almost embarrassed myself in a public movie theater.  I cried so hard for the last hour of the film that I was literally internally begging the movie to stop.  Musical numbers grow out of the clickety clack of a passing train or the sounds of a metal press or the scratching of a record.    Such a beautiful movie, but sad sad sad.  Forget the swan dress folks, in this film, Bjork is the real deal.  Oh yeah, and Joel Grey tap dances in a court room. Nuff said.

4.  THE MUSIC MAN

 

I can’t think of a bad number in this big bright happy romantic gem of a movie.  I mean, the minute Harold Hill gets off the train in River City and everyone starts singing at him, I totally wanted to move there.  Plus, the women had unbearably large hats, and the men wore lots of stripes.  Mostly I love this film because we used to gather on my parents’ bed in our pajamas and watch it every time it was on.  Usually during a PBS fund drive.  Oh, and I almost forgot, Opie Taylor sings “Wells Fargo Wagon” with the most unpolitically-correct lisp in this history of film.  “Amaryllitttthhhhhh!”

3.  SOUTH PARK:  BIGGER LONGER & UNCUT

The funniest first 45 minutes in film……EVER.  And probably the filthiest.  But what many people just don’t get, is that “South Park:  Bigger Longer & Uncut” is a near perfect send-up of the musical genre.   “La Resistance”, a montage of a song, screams “Les Miz”.  “Up There” is Satan’s tribute to “The Little Mermaid”.   Trey Parker and Matt Stone get it, and if you’re a musical theatre fan, you get it too.

2.  HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH

Okay, before I continue, if you are sensitive to language, sexuality, whatever, do NOT see Hedwig.  One time my mother called to say she was embarrassed because she had told all of her ladies who lunch to see this movie that I had said was fantastic, and they were horrified.  The movie was “Boogie Nights”.  Mind you, I never told her to recommend it to her friends, I just said that I liked it.

John Cameron Mitchell’s “Hedwig And the Angry Inch” is more rock opera than traditional musical.  The music is absolutely incredible, the script is hilarious, poignant, heartbreaking, uplifting all at the same time.  I never ever ever ever get tired of some Hedwig.  And what we learn from Hedwig is important:  that the search for your other half, the one who completes you, must begin inside.

1.  THE SOUND OF MUSIC

I know…how anticlimactic.  I can hear the groans already.  I mean, I might as well have chosen “The Wizard of Oz” and gotten it all over with.  But look at them, aren’t they just too darn cute?  Who didn’t want to be in a pre-Adolf equivalent of the Patridge family?  Who didn’t want to wear lederhosen made out of curtains?  Who didn’t want to kick it with a bunch of saucy nuns? Who didn’t want to do leaps around the interior benches of a gazebo?  Who didn’t want to wear a gauzy light blue dress and rock an orangish page boy?  Uh, maybe I should have stopped while I was ahead.  It’s still as close to movie musical perfection as you’ll get.

HONORABLE MENTION:  WIZARD OF OZ, MARY POPPINS, CHICAGO, THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, BYE BYE BIRDIE, GREASE

ANY THOUGHTS?  AGREE? DISAGREE?