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As someone who loves musicals, I feel like I have been waiting for years for the return of the movie-musical. I was first excited by Moulin Rouge, with it's campy glitter, and when Chicago followed, I was sure something good was coming. The line of poor adaptations that has followed Chicago has me very upset. Not only because it means that I am not getting the beautiful movie-musicals that I so desire, but because all of them are working from such great stage productions. The source materials are for the most part very good, but the adaptations seem unwilling to take the artistic chances to translate the shows apropriately to film.
To me, this seems to tie to an observation that Stephanie Zacharek made in her review of King Kong - that movie companies are looking for sure-fire hits these days. As opposed to taking a chance and maybe writing a musical for film, of seriously rewriting a show so that it will take more advantage of the medium, all of the shows that have come out recently are things that are HUGE hits, have won major awards, and have tremendous fan bases. So to buy into the success of the original, the film-makers seem to, for the most part, just do a straight production of the show. Both Phantom and Rent had little things they did to make the plot flow more linearly - flashbacks, montages, cross-country road trips. But these things just bogged the films down in facts, losing some of the soul of the shows. Combined with other elements of stage productions that will never translate well to film (unless you just film the stage show, stage and all), these adaptations have all seemed to take their original and maim it.
I haven't seen The Producers yet, but I was already worried, and now I am even more so.
Next they'll make a film of Wicked. Wait and see how bad that can be.
