What makes a successful movie musical?

Is it complete re-invention?

Or heightening the realism or fantasy (whichever the musical calls for)?

In your opinion what makes a successful movie musical adaptation?

Is it that the best movie musical are pre-Vietnam because the nation was deemed more innocent? That performance art was more accessible and regarded as a more respected form of entertainment?

In my opinion, and this is just one thought. That if an actor is disingenuous, I feel a movie musical can not be pulled off.

If for one moment he/she isn't giving 100% of themselves to the character, and you can't imagine this person living in the all singing, dancing environment the film falls flat. The people living in the musical don't think what they are doing is 'cheesy'- it's their lives, the nature of how they live- but if the actor or treatment gives indication that it is -for lack of a better word- camp, the audience won't buy into this idea.

Also you can't rely on music alone - the non-singing scenes need to hold your attention and further the story just as well. That's where I feel Dreamgirls lost it a little bit.

Some musicals really benefit from the new medium. For one, real location work like in 'Oliver!' - I mean that just takes the story to another level.

any thoughts?

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well of course there are the inevitable duds.

Still what are the successful movie musicals doing that the bad adaptions missed?

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Updated On: 4/18/07 at 06:09 PM

Well you can do an adaptation/re-invention (CHICAGO) or you can do a transfer/"make it work adaptation" (PHANTOM, RENT, PRODUCERS). I don't think it matters which you choose as long as you make good choices FOR FILM. It's gotta be cinematic and the script must be STRONG.

The directing style for the PRODUCERS was awful. There were fresh moments for the film, but that's it. They relied on talent for this film and it tanked.

The directing style for THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA was better, IMHO, than THE PRODUCERS or RENT. It was cinematic, had a great design, et al - however, the script needed a lot more reworking.

RENT just had screenplay problems all over the place. That was the "above all" flaw. Good material, horrible execution.

CHICAGO, of course, was obviously more accepted. The screenplay was a genius concept, especially for THIS show. It was shot well. It was choreographed well. It was performed well. It was edited well. Everything about the film was nearly spot-on.

DREAMGIRLS was in-between the two ways to do an adaptation. Of course it had several new songs and cut songs. The screenplay was obviously worked on a LOT. The talent was there. The directing was there. I don't think it was the best movie musical of all time, but still one of the best.

And as for original movie musicals, MOULIN ROUGE! was ballsy. This is not only my favorite movie musical, but my favorite film of all time. A great screenplay, great direction, great talent.

The key to making a movie musical is how to make the audience feel comfortable with the characters singing and dancing. The rest is the same stuff any other movie-making process goes through that isn't a musical.

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Being named "Chicago."

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I would say the largest challenge for a movie musical is to not make it feel simply like a taped musical. I think there is a lot of grey area in the transfer/make it work spectrum, but my favorite movie musicals are able to maintain the sort of structure of feeling around the musical numbers while adding enough dialogue to fit the film medium.
There are some of the same challenges for movie musicals that there are for musicals though - I feel like great musicals are those when you don't "feel" a song coming on, there is a smoother transition. On film I feel like this is even harder to do than on stage.

I can't really articulate what made Moulin Rouge so successful - Baz Luhrman did the same thing with Shakespeare though when he did the 96 version of Romeo and Juliet. Its like he created a contemporary setting without making it a specific time period and just integrated all the elements so that they projected the underlying tone of the piece.

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I think one of the most important aspects of a succesful movie musical is establishing that it is a movie musical. I wasn't a big fan of the Dreamgirls movie, and I think that its big problem was that only a few songs were actually scenes being sung, so many of the songs were the girls performing that when the songs were intergrated into context (if that makes sense) the audience wasn't prepared for it, and they wouldn't accept it.

Chicago dropped everything and made each musical number a musical number, so that the audience was forced in accepting it and enjoying it, rather than flip-flopping.

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two words:

ROB MARSHALL

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