Whaddya know, a Cannon Movie Tale that didn’t make me cringe once. Maybe it’s just the Christmas spirit getting started I’ve had this queued for ages just ‘cos it has Nicola Stapleton in it as the young Snow White, and I was really surprised by how much screentime she has – more than half the movie – making it almost worth watching “just for her” even more than Hansel and Gretel, where she played Gretel. And it kinda makes sense, too – kids watching I’m sure will get much more out of someone their own age being the one who first encounters the dwarves etc. Anyway, needless for me to say, Stapleton is irresistibly lovable with her long black hair, the camera barely leaves her alone, and she gets to sing more than a handful of songs. “Daddy’s Knee” is just so cute it makes you sick, lol. The other songs are really surprisingly good, too … sometimes almost too good, lol (“Everyday I seem to grow / Isn’t it lucky I have learned to sew?” – shut up, I loved that line, lol)

Another thing this one does, something people are always criticising fairytale movies (especially Disney ones) of avoiding, is really deliver on the creep factor at times, like say when Snow White looks into the mirror herself, or the Queen telling the woodsman to bring back her liver from the forest, or even worse the Queen’s ending – which, while not quite as creepy as Terry Gilliam’s Brothers Grimm, will certainly give some kids nightmares. I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed this one, and I’d almost be more happy to watch it again than the Disney version – though I’ll admit that’s probably mostly the Nicola talking.

I guess I’ve changed since my last review. You can’t overlook the overwhelming darkness of this movie with the usual, cynical, “oh, they so totally Disnified it,” comment on the ending. This is probably the darkest children’s movie ever made, referring so frequently as it does to the very bowels of hell, sins of the flesh, ugliness, blood and fire, all to the almost Omen-esque tones of Alan Menken’s score, one of his very best, and Stephen Schwartz’ irresistible lyrics. Even the lightest song referred to below, “Guy Like You,” contains an image of hanging marionettes. It’s thick with the grisliest aspects of humanity and if all Disney needed to do to justify all this was let Esmerelda live, then so be it as far as I’m concerned now.

December 27th, 2004:

This is a way better movie than a lot of Disney’s stuff that came later, but no where near as good as I originally thought. It does have scene after scene of haunting music and images: from “The Bells of Notre Dame” to “Out There” to the ultimate bad guy showstopper, “Beata Maria / Hellfire”, Alan Menken’s score and Stephen Schwartz’s lyrics are a treasure, overlooked at the Oscars (not even a song nomination, it’s sacrilege). Even the standard ‘Hakuna Matata’ ish “A Guy Like You” is fantastic (how can you not love a song that begins, “Paris, the city of lovers, is glowing this evening – / True, that’s because it’s on fire, but still there’s l’amour…”)

Where Hunchback stumbles, aside from comparisons to the classic 1939 movie which is simply irreplacable, is perhaps a result of all the gloriously heavy scenes. I guess, being a Disney movie, they had to balance it with something for the kids. I actually don’t mind some of the humour, it’s not too bad sometimes, but it’s too much of a contrast, I’d rather have an all-out gothic madness fest. And of course, Esmerelda doesn’t stay dead, which bugs me a lot – and I’m somebody who didn’t mind the absurd alterations Disney made to The Little Mermaid etc. It’s not necessarily the fact she doesn’t stay dead – it’s more the fact that it looks like she’s going to, and then it looks like somebody at Disney said, “Well, we can’t have her re-animated with a kiss, that’ll be just like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White and oh, everything that worked… so how can we get her back in action?” and some cleaning lady or vending machine filler passing by suggests, “She could just stand up in the background?”

However, after the disappointment of this PC gloss-job, Disney do have at least one superb emotional pay-off at the end. I never fail to cry when that little girl comes out of the crowd and the ‘camera’ pans so slowly around them as Quasimodo finally sees a glimmer of hope in the world around him.

Edit: eep! I hadn’t realised this previously had 4 stars. It’s obviously meant to be 5

Once again I wasn’t sure if I’d have much to add to past reviews, but there’s plenty. I could babble about this one and the adorableness (wow, is that a word? Apple spellcheck didn’t call me on it, lol) of Alicia Morton forever. I love how all my three fave songs (“Maybe”, “Hard Knock” and “Tomorrow”) are squished into the first 15 minutes, I mean they really make it hard on themselves making the bulk of the movie live up to those, and against all odds they absolutely succeed. Just when I worry I might lose interest, some other song I’ve forgotten, some other moment or glance (Annie’s awe at the toys when Daddy Warbucks lifts her onto his shoulders to look through the store window! hehe), happens. As he did for Chicago and (according to the IMDb) the forthcoming Nine (kickass if that’s really happening, btw), Rob Marshall not only directed here but also choreographed it’s one of the best things about the movie – “I’m Gonna Like It Here” and “I Don’t Need Anything But You” are beautifully organised, and in the latter in particular, as in the rest of the movie, Victor Garber and Morton are astonishingly in sync, their chemistry is just heartmelting.

I plan to watch the John Huston version again this Christmas if it’s on TV – I owe it another chance after all these years dedicated to this one – but I really doubt any version, even on stage, will ever match the sheer adorable innocence of this one. Why doesn’t Annie recognise the frickin’ obvious disguise Hannigan dons at the end, miserable IMDb whiners may ask (okay, actually I think I read that elsewhere, but I’m sure someone on the idiot boards have asked that somewhere in time)? Because there isn’t a shred of suspicion in that girl’s heart. It doesn’t mean she’s stupid – it means she’s more human and pure than any of us. Never mind the poetic licence and suspension of disbelief on our part that maybe her disguise could be better than it looks to us who are in on it – it doesn’t matter. Just like none of the cheesy flaws here matter … ‘cos the songs and the girl and the moves are just perfect.

December 5th, 2005:

I know, I should just not review movies I watch when I don’t have much to say beyond “I love it!”, especially when I already have a review as long as the one below, but I just won’t feel right since I watched this again today if I don’t say how I love it one more time. Once again, just look how much water flies in “Hard Knock Life”. When making a movie of a stage show you should always think about what maybe people always wanted to do onstage but couldn’t for technical reasons, and Rob Marshall seems so aware of this. And Alicia Morton …. am I gonna get some stupid hateful and overblown comment here if I sigh over her cuteness? This movie may become a twice/thrice/more yearly thing for me, lol. I’m completely with Rufus Wainwright, who revealed on Paul O’Grady this past week how, when he was a kid, he wanted to be an Annie lol

6th May 2005:

I was kind of worried about coming to review this, thinking I wouldn’t really have much to say about it aside from simply, “Cute as ever, I love it,” which is true, by the way – but I did notice a few things this time round I hadn’t noticed before.

The movie’s shot a lot like the classic, classic Hollywood movies, lots of crane shots etc, and of course, fake NYC backgrounds. I think this aspect of the movie adds a lot to the movie’s charm. It’s certainly a far cry from John Huston’s overblown 1982 version (which I’ll review at another time, but the word that came to mind today was “gaudy”), which is a good thing. It’s ironic that this classical Hollywood visual style makes the television aspect ratio (4:3) almost fitting.

I never noticed before that the vocals in the singing numbers are post-synced (as is often done in these things, but it’s often screwed up too – I’m still dying to see Phantom of the Opera again on DVD to see if the awful sync I experienced in the cinema was “meant” to be there or was just a projection goof). The reason I never noticed before is that it’s done impeccably well, especially when you consider that children are involved, and Alicia Morton is among the best of the syncers.

Annie is one of my favourite musicals and it has at least two of my all-time favourite songs from any genre – “Tomorrow” and “Maybe”. I’ve already mentioned the John Huston movie, but I’ve also seen the show on stage twice. I don’t really remember the first time, but the last, though good (because in my opinion you simply can’t make a truly bad version of Annie), had its problems. The problem with stage versions is the stuff you can’t do easily, and it comes to that old adage, children and animals. It’s really hard to find talented kids and coax a great performance out of them, at the same time as just having that mystical je-ne-sais-quoi that makes any actor or actress simply grab you, and make them do it live several nights at a time … it’s not a surprising problem.

I don’t think I know a single person who would call Aileen Quinn (of the John Huston movie) ‘cute’ or particularly talented – sure she could belt “Tomorrow”, but belting “Tomorrow” is perhaps a thing Annie is more hated for than loved, lol. Alicia Morton is the perfect Annie, though. Her voice is good, but not too good, when she sings she just sounds like a little girl singing. They give her the red hair, but it’s more a shade of red than outright ginger curls. Even in the classic red dress with a slight curl in her hair, it’s never so garish as in previous versions. In close-up, she’s heartbreaking, her eyes are almost like a little puppy’s, just big black pupils pleading, “love me”.

Of the things that were good in the ‘82 version – namely Bernadette Peters, Tim Curry, and Carol Burnett – well, you couldn’t ask for better replacements than Kristin Chenoweth, Alan Cumming and Kathy Bates. You even get Pumbaa as Mr. Bundles. Rob Marshall sneaks some cute visual tricks in too, though considering he followed this with Chicago, you wouldn’t really know it was in him – I personally love the match-cut of Annie running into a cop’s/Miss Hannigan’s arms; and, going back to what I was saying about stuff that’s hard to do on stage, I like that he always does something that would never be done on stage where he can – in “Hard Knock Life” alone, he first covers the floor in water and then ends on a big, feathery pillow fight. This is a movie I’ll still be watching when I’m 90.

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).

Okay it’s about time I whittled down my slew of brainspew-on-the-page reviews and write something proper on this one, so as of now, those old reviews I wrote with my internal censor entirely bound and gagged are confined to a text file on my desktop – so don’t worry, they haven’t gone for good … but I don’t intend for anyone new to read them.

So let’s start at the beginning. I always tend to say I found “Rent” late, but now I look back and realise I first listened to it only 3 years after Jonathan Larson’s death, I realise, I didn’t do so bad afterall. I became a Renthead for a good year or so courtesy of my first and only true batch (give or take a person or two) of online friends. That line the whole show revolves around, “No Day But Today”, got me at the right time, and I guess that’s where the undeniable brilliance of this movie for me personally starts. It still has that persistent line, and that’s one star out of five you can’t take away from it. Add the use of the original cast where possible and you’ve got your second.

The movie took years to finally happen – I believe they were working on it practically from the day it became a Broadway hit. Spike Lee and Martin Scorsese were attached, they went from an entire, practically devoid of music rewrite to a verbatim reproduction and everything inbetween … it’s amazing even a second of goodness remains let alone the scene upon scene that does, so there’s your third immovable star right there. It finally landed in the hands of Chris Columbus, who did a good job of the first two by-the-numbers Harry Potter movies. Sure those first two movies lacked the cinematic adventure of the subsequent productions (actually, I’d argue that only Azkaban fit that description, the last was quite messy by comparison), but they were undeniably faithful to source.

Anyway, it’s the same situation here: though often the movie lacks the punch of its source, the times when it is heartbreakingly faithful are more impeccably done than anyone could’ve expected. Though whole chunks of music have been stripped away, more often than not it is entirely made up for by what follows or preceeds the breach. For example, I don’t like the fact that “Goodbye Love” has been taken away (even though it’s one of the few removals they did film, and is available on the DVD and soundtrack) ... but the use of that song’s music as underscore during the “Search for Mimi” montage is almost equally indispensable. In the same way, I don’t like the restaging of certain scenes – Tango Maureen turning into Tango Roxanne from Moulin Rouge, and the entirely incomprehensible staging of “Take Me Or Leave Me” being the main offenders – but it’s always made up for. Mimi leaves Roger as she sings the last part of “Another Day”, but I loved her desperation as she sung that into his face when I saw it onstage … here, though, the image of Angel, Collins, and Mark coming round the corner behind her is just as indelible.

In the end, as my old reviews fleshed out, there are a lot of things wrong with this movie, and I can entirely understand why newcomers in particular could be turned off quickly, and this annoys me no end; the movie pretty much failed to make the show any new fans, so why did they attempt to change it at all for the big screen? The point is, yes, it’s flawed; but it’s so consistent in its style, that beautiful rusty colour scheme making every single frame undeniably RENT, they brought back a good 2/3rds of the original cast, people who knew Larson, who really knew the show better than any of us will, and those standalone scenes like “I’ll Cover You” on the street and “Sante Fe” on the subway – in the end, no matter how much this movie infuriates me, even if it catches me in the worst of moods … I can never say that it’s less than a masterpiece, and I hope that everyone who ever needs exactly what it offers will find it like I did all those years ago.

Okay, I’ll admit, that still got away from me a little, but it’s better than what preceeded it lol. What can I say, this movie sends me into a tizzy. Oh … and I still seriously think the one thing that could’ve made the movie better would’ve been a tiny glimpse of Larson in that end montage, à la Douglas Adams in the H2G2 movie.

This is one of those movies that is just so engrained on me I find it impossible to write a real review of it, but my site would feel kind of empty without it, and I did just watch it for the first time in a long time (I tend to watch the sequel more, lol, trust me I’m slapping my wrists as I type …). Actually, I don’t know the whole movie here by heart as much as I thought I would – sure there’s no surprises anymore, but it’s the music that’s engrained on me more than anything else. I had the soundtrack on cassette, probably on its first release … it was practically glued into my walkman and may have been one of the few recordings I ever actually “wore out” by listening to so much (I definitely know I cut up the liner notes to cover my dormitory wall in pics of Ariel at the height of my crush on her, lol). I have memories, too, that instantly make me blush feverishly, of walking around school singing along to it out loud, lol.

Anyway, I guess that’s the kind of movie it is. It’s not one you can dissect and analyse – though I did, at college, and it’s sort of fascinating, FYI – it just gets inside you, from that first appearance of the mer-people to Alan Menken’s instrumental “Part of Your World”, the first glimpse of Ariel’s red hair bobbing up over the sunken ship bow to another version of the same theme, past the soaring song itself, the ultimate Disney “Want” song, and you’re still only 20 minutes in. You still have the reprise, Eric’s playing it on the flute on the beach, and of course, when Ariel loses her voice to wicked Ursula. There are a ton of great songs in this movie, but on this viewing I couldn’t help but focus on that one theme. This movie is really like a masterclass in how to make the most of a great theme without over using it. The runtime barely hits 80 minutes, yet that theme must occur at least 10 times throughout, always at significant moments, and it never even begins to grind.

I’d love to see this one on the big screen … I was about to say “again” there but I just realised I never did, Aladdin was my first and I didn’t see any of the re-releases till Mulan came out before Tarzan. And you know what, I guess Prince Eric isn’t quite as bad as I’ve always made him out to be … just (and I cringe to say it but I’m too tired of writing now to find a better way) very “male” ... which I guess is the point, lol.

Grrr Disney Cinemagic started dying on me while I was watching this today but I’ve seen it way too many times already so I’m still gonna post something about it. I really don’t know whether to call this a guilty pleasure or actually seriously call it a good movie – while just about everything here that isn’t Melody is flat, cheesy, ridiculous even, I really think Melody herself ranks up there with the best of the Disney Princesses – the dreaminess, the outcast quality, the look of course, the wanting in her eyes, the song – she’s one of my favourites anyway, if not my absolute favourite. I love it, mostly, anyway. At least they get the absolute worst – the sickeningly perky opening number (but I just have a major problem with Prince Eric lol) – out of the way quickly, and I could listen to “For a Moment” on a loop for the rest of my life, Tara Charandoff-Strong kicks butt. Maybe that song is the only reason I love the movie, I don’t know, it’s possible – it’s a good reason I think. The Tip and Dash song is fairly catchy too. It’s definitely one of the “surprisingly good” Disney sequels to me anyway, and I’ll watch it way too many more times yet.

Come back Hoodwinked!, all is forgiven! Within 10 minutes of this one – which I was actually looking forward to seeing – I had taken back all the problems I had with the ‘updating’ work in the latest animated adaptation of the story. First point: if you’re gonna make a musical anything, don’t use a midi sound module in place of an orchestra – especially if you’re in the 21st century. Nothing infuriates me more than bad music in a movie, and if it’s a musical, well, nuff said. Seriously, musical aside, the music here is horrendously tacky. Only one movie I can think of has got away with dodgy midi-ish sound – and that’s Trey Parker’s Cannibal: The Musical, and the reasoning there is self-explanatory.

This is before we even get to the songs – when Red first bursts into song atop a lighthouse, there’s a moment of, “oh, maybe this won’t be so bad afterall …” but it’s cut short; then, when Debi Mazar starts singing, you know it’s gonna be a tough 70 minutes – personally, I nearly died laughing. Call it a coping mechanism.

My instinct is to say, “I can’t believe the guy who made Grease has lost his grasp on the musical genre so badly …” ... but the fact is, I’ve never liked Grease that much. For me, Randal Kleiser has just never topped Blue Lagoon – itself a pretty awful movie from the wrong angles, but it has some amazing aspects if you look close enough (and I’m not talking about Brooke Shields no matter how much that sounded like I was, lol – if you want an example, how about the phosphorescent plankton?).

Oh, and let’s play my favourite movie game!! Where’s The Only Laugh?? It’s here – “The cellphone user you’re trying to contact is either unavailable or has stepped out of the service area, down the shortcut, and into the dangerous part of the wood.” In all fairness, I thought that was a pretty great line. But maybe I was just desperate.