I just know this review’s gonna come off as narrowminded and/or joyless no matter how hard I try, so I’ll just do my usual thing of letting my mind spill out. I wrote already (not sure, maybe here, maybe elsewhere) how my heart sank when I first listened to the soundtrack recording – right from the “oh, oh, oh” at the beginning, I was just, wtf have you done to it? And including “Mama I’m a Big Girl” as a bonus track (here in the end credits), I’m sorry, just didn’t appease me enough.

I’m not even a huge fan of this show to start with, but it still bugged me that much. The arrangements – much like the movie version of Rent (which, I guess I have to add, did finally grow on me to an overwhelming extent – but come on, that was RENT lol) – are just way too rigid. Sure, this presumably helps with the precision required on film for lip-syncing, editing, etc – all of which by the way are perfect (especially the all-important lip-sync – see Phantom) – but for me it comes over far too lifeless for any movie let alone a musical.

As expected, Michelle Pfeiffer and John Travolta are a hoot (Pfeiffer moreso than Travolta – much of the time he’s just a bizarrely annoying Austin Powers/Zoolander hybrid in a fat suit), and (outside of the “oh, oh, oh”) Nikki Blonsky has undeniably infectious energy. The production design is probably the real star here, colour popping from every cranny making the 2 hour running time (I know, I know, must stop whining about length in every review I write, lol) more than bearable. So it’s not a total disaster – I just doubt I’ll be watching at again, and I’d be pretty livid if it got nominated for any major Oscars in January (bizarrely, even a Picture nod right now seems terrifyingly possible).

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 8th, 2007 at 9:25 pm in 3 hearts, Movie Reviews and tagged as broadway, musical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.