UH-OH!! The Musical Alert System has just risen the warning level from amber to burnt sienna. My teeth were fully grinding as I placed this movie into my DVD player. Most of you may know that I have a pretty healthy dislike for most musical without actually having seen them. Its essentially a dislike for the genre. It makes me want to puke with how cheesy and sappy these things can be. But, like many other movies I have reviewed in this little dog and pony show, I am seeing my first movie from a classic film maker. In this case it happens to be Irving Berlin, and it just so happens that this movie isn't really a musical. I'll explain...When I think of musicals, I think of possibly bad songs invading sappy dialogue and cheesy overacting. Of course, think isn't the case with all of them. To name a few obvious ones...The Wizard of Oz, West Side Story, Singing in the Rain, Mary Poppins, Guys and Dolls, and of course, the first Broadway show I ever saw, Avenue Q. These are good. I enjoy them. But I want to stab my eyes out at the thought of Damn Yankees. What I have seen of Seven Brides For Seven Brothers is enough to make me want to O.D. on drugs for Restless Leg Syndrome. Oh, and then there is the king of them all: Oklahoma. Haven't seen all of it, but the empty feeling I had where my soul once was somehow went away when I changed the channel. I still haven't come to terms with the fact that Wolverine was in the revival.
Why doesn't this movie fit into what I consider a musical? It's because the music is imperative to the telling of the story, whereas I don't think it usually is in most musicals. This is a movie about a band that makes it big, breaks up, makes it big again, and all that stuff. You couldn't do it without music. Could you do New York, New York without music? Could you do The Commitments without music? Could you do Kazaam without music? I don't think so. Okay, I never saw the last one and its not enough in my queue list, so we are all saved...for now. But to iterate again(reiterate), the music is imperative to the telling of the story. And it helps that Irving Berlin is really, really, really good at what he does. It's very entertaining music to listen to and some of the dance numbers that accompany the music are fun to watch also. YES PEOPLE, I enjoyed this movie.
And speaking of New York, New York, I have a greater appreciation of what Scorsese was doing with that film. Knowing the kind of film historian he is, I feel that I have seen the research that directly went into the development of that film. But he puts his own storytelling style into it, thereby making a kind of modernized and raw version of the film I just saw. I will say that I enjoyed Alexander's Ragtime Band more, but that would have more to do with better music than anything else. Plus, I haven't gotten over my unwarranted feelings against Liza Manelli. Sorry, that's just the way it is.
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