Vote for the WORST Movie Musical Adaptation Ever- Page 4

[Roscoe]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 3:21pm

Yeah, trust Joel Schumacher to let Miranda Richardson, one of our greatest living actresses, ruin his movie with authenticity.

PHANTOM does have a sort of a trainwreck vibe to it. It does get amusing to count how many words get to be sung before Schumacher decides to cut away from the person singing. And Schumacher's fetish for drapery and statues is really something -- they get as much screen time as Emmy Rossum does.

Updated On: 1/6/10 at 03:21 PM

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 3:23pm

I agree Miranda Richardson is one of our best actresses. Of course, I don't know whose decision it was to have the Pepe LePew accent.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 3:25pm

*Cough* Miranda *Cough*

I'm one of the people who liked the Phantom movie, but I wasn't a huge fan of the stage show.

[Roscoe]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 3:46pm

Noted, corrected, I knew it didn't sound right.

I'll take the Divine Miranda's accent over Minnie Driver's cartoon Italian. Yeah yeah yeah, over the top on purpose, but still.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 4:18pm

Oh, I LOVED Minnie D. (Not proud of it, but . . . )

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 4:26pm

I agree that movie is corny and ridiculous, but that's one of the reasons I like it.

[Roscoe]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 4:28pm

Corny and ridiculous are not the problem. Directed by Joel Schumacher, starring Gerard Butler are the problems.

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 4:32pm

I know it's awful, but I have a soft spot for A CHORUS LINE. It introduced me to the musical...and the genius of what it means to be a Landers sister.

Annie is nearly unwatchable...but that overproduced Hard-Knock Life with an orphan literally spinning on a fire escape? Heaven.

But Mame??? Normally, you have to go to a back alley and pay some guy with a coat hanger $300 to achieve those results.

[Schmerg_The_Impaler]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 5:58pm

Ha! Agreed about Miranda Richardson and Bob Gunton!

I thought the best part of the Phantom film was those managers-- I love both of those actors, and they were great together. But... I actually liked the freaky interpretive dancers in Point of No Return. Granted, the film was my first visual exposure to the musical (I think I was ten-- though I did already have the Original Cast Recording), but I thought they were cool.

[spiderdj82]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 7:13pm

Today, I watched "Mamma Mia" for the first time since it's release and I want to add that to my list. I mean, a movie is horrendous when it brings a bad performance from Meryl Streep.

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 7:46pm

One of the worst things about "Phantom" (and there are plenty to list) is that nearly the entire score is UNDER TEMPO. Painfully so. I can't get past the first ten minutes now because of it. Even the best actors in the world couldn't come off as "spontaneous" with ... these ... slow ... tempos.

Then, out of the blue, "Masquerade" is oddly too fast! Almost like wind-up toys on the wrong speed. It makes no sense when the rest of the film is mired in SLOW. Then you get a crack-induced "Masquerade."

The musical director should be shot. Webber, too, since he sat in on all the recording sessions.

Bleh.

And I agree that the Joel Schumacher "superhero" approach to the Phantom himself is appalling.

Updated On: 1/8/10 at 07:46 PM

[Schmerg_The_Impaler]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 7:53pm

Oh dear lord yes, how could I forget Mamma Mia? I've never seen the stage version, so I don't know how they compare, but it is one of only three movies that I had to stop watching halfway through because I just couldn't bear it. I couldn't see any correlation between the dialogue and the songs-- they just came out of nowhere with these hideously awkward transitions... and Christine Baranski's cougar number was when I just had to stop watching.

[Roscoe]

Posted: 1/8/10 at 9:44am

A Supposedly Fun Film I'll Never See Again

MAMMA MIA is a musical play that takes the songs of ABBA and plugs them into a story line. Simple enough, right? The story isn't much: a Girl lives on a Greek Island with her Mother. The Girl wants to marry her Shirtless Boyfriend, but wants her Father to attend the wedding. She doesn't know who her Father is, because her Mother isn't entirely sure who the Father was. So the Girl, unbeknownst to her Mother, sends invitations to the three most likely candidates, and FUN ensues. That's the plan, anyway. On Broadway, a certain degree of FUN did ensue. The show was mostly charming, it didn't take itself too terribly seriously (one poor actor had to sing ABBA's song SOS as if it was a serious relationship song and came off looking rather foolish) but hey it was over mostly painlessly. I didn't want to hunt down and kill everyone associated with it. And compared with others that have come since, like GOOD VIBRATIONS, MAMMA MIA comes off like MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

So now there's a movie, with Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, Stellan Skarsgard. A really good cast, by any standard. So what goes wrong?

The material is so incredibly feather light that everybody seems to work harder than they've ever worked before to keep it light. The vastly over-qualified cast seems so afraid of coming off as too good for the movie that they all over compensate: they play the FUN with a seriousness that quashes the fun entirely, and the SERIOUS moments are played with a level of honesty that the material just can't bear. The fun-induced panic that hovers around Meryl Streep is particularly oppressive: America's Dowager Actress Goddess lays it on like a CEO at an office picnic glad-handing the janitors. She hasn't worked this hard since SOPHIE'S CHOICE. And nobody else fares any better: the usually magnificent Julie Walters at one point steps into a small dinghy, and of course falls off into the water, but the process by which she loses her balance and falls in is so blatant and overdone that any slight amusement I might feel is quickly stifled. It becomes kind of a metaphor for the entire film: what should be effortless as falling off a boat becomes labored and obvious, too much damn work.

I could go on about the disparity between the obvious location shooting and the obviously studio-shot scenes, and Pierce Brosnan's really appalling attempts at singing (a male Marni Nixon was direly needed here). But I won't bother. I feel like I'm kicking a puppy here. An obnoxiously overcute puppy.

[madbrian]

Posted: 1/8/10 at 9:53am

I don't know if it has been mentioned earlier in the thread, but I think Camelot belongs in this discussion.

[amalou]

Posted: 1/10/10 at 6:59pm

"And Butler's ghastly wounded moose bellowing, God in heaven."

This is the best thing I've heard all day! haha!

[Eris0303]

Posted: 1/10/10 at 7:34pm

That said, I also saw a film of Anything Goes on late late TV once that threw out all the Cole Porter songs... seemed like a really really bad idea.

I enjoy the film and actually own it. But I seem to enjoy anything with Donald O'Connor. There's a great dance number with him and Mitzi Gaynor to De-Lovely. Does it have anything to do with the stage play? Other than a few songs and a boat then no. But I thought Bing Crosby and Donald O'Connor worked really well together. Honestly, I think it might be remembered with fondness had it not been called Anything Goes.