Just saw last night’s screening at Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. Lots of gorgeous sequences, but for a purist like me, it was crushing to see how much of the score was thrown out and replaced with new but inferior songs that ruined the period story and said nothing about these characters. Not sure how you say you’ll make a movie of this musical, then throw half the musical’s score away.
Seems like Blitz (director) really studied Rob Marshall’s Chicago film— he loved creating numbers out of a character’s imagination rather than real life. Resulted in some lovely scenes of pure song and dance.
Also on the plus side, the cast was superb top to bottom, the choreography was non-stop, the camera moved like a proper movie musical, and you believed the director really wanted to tell a story in song and dance (even though he forgot to do that for long stretches of the 2nd half.)
Whatever misgivings I had about the movie, it was delicious to hear the director, DP, production designer, plus Fantasia, Taraji, Corey and especially Danielle hold forth on the process that brought this movie into being. That cast was pure gold!
Updated On: 11/18/23 at 09:59 AM