Yahoo Lifestyle Peter Bart: Today’s Movie Musicals Are Wicked Successful But A Far Cry From The Sunnier Settings Of Hollywood’s Golden Age Hits
Many of us survived the Covid days by rediscovering old MGM musicals, humming tunes from Singing In the Rain or doing a Fred Astaire tap from Top Hat.
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So if they represented islands of good cheer, let’s get real about the new cycle of musicals: Like their forebears, they will likely win lots of awards and make money, but tonally they are not exactly generous with joy. Even some of their admirers were left hopeful that Bob Dylan would find a new analyst, Maria Callas would try Tinder and Elton John — well Never Too Late may be pushing it.
Award nominations already are stacking up for Timothée Chalamet, Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Karla Sofía Gascón and Angelina Jolie among others, and Universal is joyful about its $500 million-plus grosses for Wicked. There’s no doubt that the musical genre has re-established itself, with even some of this year’s non-musical titles suggesting lyrical adaptations — Babygirl, Nightbitch and My Old Ass deserve lyrics. Anora at least offers moments of music to calm its sexual athleticism.
The stars of this new cycle arguably deserve special praise because the characters they depict are vastly more complex (and confused) than those of the old musicals. Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain and Fred Astaire in Top Hat were essentially airheads. The protagonists of more recent musicals like Wonka or Cats did not exactly reflect Chekhovian tensions.
Chalamet, by contrast, persuasively reminds his audience that Dylan, though lacking personal charm, managed to create a new sound and a new lexicon for his generation. “What’s the matter with me – I don’t have much to say,” is one of his classic lines.
Spoiler alert: The climactic moment of the movie takes place at the 1965 Newport Jazz Festival where Dylan “goes electric,” thus defying folksy purists in his audience. They booed, then cheered, still not figuring out who he is.
By contrast, Astaire plays an airhead dancer in Top Hat, a mistaken identity story co-starring Ginger Rogers, who is a beautiful heiress with no problems in London and Paris.
Jolie, as Maria Callas, superbly depicts a reclusive superstar in her declining days, losing her voice and coping with the neuroses of billionaire Aristotle Onassis.
In Emilia Pérez, Gascón and Gomez have to cope with a Mexican cartel boss who aspires to live as a woman. Hence their lives are more nuanced than Leslie Caron’s, the beautiful Parisian nymphet in Gigi who hears admirers singing songs like “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.”
The grandest settings, of course, are those of Wicked, whose stars have the benefit of a score that has already proven itself in countless stage performances and who have already taken myriad stage bows.
Grande and Erivo will doubtless be an important presence at the Oscars, not to mention every other event in search of a show-stopper.
It is doubtful that Bob Dylan, now 83, will attend the Oscars. When he was surprisingly awarded the Nobel Prize in 2016, he decided that blowing in the wind would be a more satisfying activity.
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