I don't get why everybody loved this. Mostly it seemed to me a fake. Or, put another way, it was a producer's movie, crammed with Stuff, most of it okay but not great, spinning around a center that was even more okay, and even more not-great. Mainly it was just busy, and appeared designed for busy people--people who are too busy for music.
To me the appeal of musicals is simple: I like to listen to people sing and watch them dance, and to experience being in a place where people communicate through song and dance. I couldn't easily to do that here. For one thing, ehe dancing was shot and edited so it couldn't be seen clearly; I can't remember another song-and-dance movie that seemed to take so little visual pleasure in dancing. And then, the musical numbers were constantly being interrupted by cutaways to dramatic scenes. The latter weren't very good in themselves; they looked as if they were still in rehearsal. And what they were telling duplicated what the dancing was telling, so that, besides getting in each other's way, each eliminated the need for the other. What with all the back and forth, the characters and the story never had a chance to register, and I had to take my bearings from what I remembered of the old movie.
A lot of things that would probably work on stage didn't work in this film because its style, or mix of styles, was poorly defined. Sometimes I felt as if I were watching a taped a stage play, other times I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be watching. The leads seemed able to sing and dance, more or less, but none with enough skill to carry a musical, or sell a number, or establish a character. A few things were good: the song by Queen Latifah; the song by the abandoned husband; and even the finale by the two stars, when they finally get up something worth seeing and the camera allows us to see it. But most of the show was just...Stuff. Busy, not-great Stuff.
To me the appeal of musicals is simple: I like to listen to people sing and watch them dance, and to experience being in a place where people communicate through song and dance. I couldn't easily to do that here. For one thing, ehe dancing was shot and edited so it couldn't be seen clearly; I can't remember another song-and-dance movie that seemed to take so little visual pleasure in dancing. And then, the musical numbers were constantly being interrupted by cutaways to dramatic scenes. The latter weren't very good in themselves; they looked as if they were still in rehearsal. And what they were telling duplicated what the dancing was telling, so that, besides getting in each other's way, each eliminated the need for the other. What with all the back and forth, the characters and the story never had a chance to register, and I had to take my bearings from what I remembered of the old movie.
A lot of things that would probably work on stage didn't work in this film because its style, or mix of styles, was poorly defined. Sometimes I felt as if I were watching a taped a stage play, other times I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be watching. The leads seemed able to sing and dance, more or less, but none with enough skill to carry a musical, or sell a number, or establish a character. A few things were good: the song by Queen Latifah; the song by the abandoned husband; and even the finale by the two stars, when they finally get up something worth seeing and the camera allows us to see it. But most of the show was just...Stuff. Busy, not-great Stuff.