Let’s first start with Jonathan Larson’s Rent, which was at its very best, catchy and urgent, and at its worst, cheezy, inbred, bombastic and cloying.  Its’ influence, the greater rock/popification of Broadway, is undeniable, if not universally acclaimed.  But it is what it is, and I always found it to be meh.  

As did the South Park guys.

tick tick  . . . BOOM! is Larson’s solo work just before Rent, as directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and tells Larson’s story as he tries to get a musical off-the-ground.

The picture is a love letter to theater and theater kids. It is populated by scads of Broadway regulars and icons, in what comes off as a tribute to Larson, who tragically passed away from an aortic aneurysm before his triumph Rent opened.  

The film’s exuberance is near-irresistible. As Larson, Andrew Garfield is so winning, so all-encompassing in his love and enthusiasm for the character and the numbers, that even without Miranda’s clever and engaging staging, he would have carried this thing on his back and across the goal line.      

Of greater moment is the dawning that his one-man musical before Rent was better, in total. The numbers are strong, less gloppy and a little more introspective, and Larson has a better handle on communicating his own artistic struggle than in conveying the plight of the East Village bohemians. For example, this clever, Sondheim-esque ditty is better than most of Rent.

The film suffers from some of the same moral simplicity and noxious casualness that Rent evinced at its worst (who can stand La Vie Boheme when all the self-satisfied, insular riff-raff take up an entire table and “never buy” – Fuck you, waiter! We’re artists!) but it is brief and unobtrusive. In tick tick . . . BOOM!, Larson writes a funny, fantasy piece about escaping the miseries of the City and all of its indignities. In Rent, he has a bunch of pretty, smug faces ennoble the crud.

Great fun. On Netflix.

Steven Spielberg‘s vibrant, fluid update subtly modernizes but stays traditional to the original in all the right places.  The “daddy-o” is largely excised but the film still feels like a night at the most expansive Broadway theater.

To be fair, it’s hard to miss the mark too wide with such rich source material. Unlike most musicals, in West Side Story, no number is unmemorable. There isn’t even one that is weak.

The dance at the gym and “America” are particularly good. In the first, Tony and Maria do not melt into the frantic gyrations of the Jets and Sharks, but rather are drawn beneath the bleachers, where, smitten, they have a charming conversation. Before the scene becomes too standard, a snap of Maria’s fingers beautifully cements their attraction and we are returned to the fantasy of dance. In the latter, the call and refrain of the Sharks as to the merits and drawbacks of their new home starts small in an apartment and blossoms in a wondrous, joyful romp culminating in the intersection of a city street.

Screenwriter Tony Kushner (Angels in America) makes several changes to the original, placing the gangs in the peril of urban renewal, beefing up the role of Chino, humanizing Officer Krupke, and providing a critical backstory for Tony which tempers his infatuation with an internal struggle that explodes at the rumble. While more talky, none of the updating is balky or detracts from the music and choreography, which remains front and center.

Three nits. First, Tony (Ansel Elgort) takes a while to imprint. His first number (“Something’s Coming”) doesn’t help. It is geographically limited, stuck as he is in the basement of the drugstore, and Tony just feels a bit muted. It is only until he meets Maria that he starts to connect with the audience.

Second, Spielberg gives us a sparse “Cool”, and moves the song back to before the rumble. It feels like a missed opportunity.  The 1961 film placed the number after the killings, smartly delaying it from the stage play so the Jets could exercise their frustration and hate after the murders in a bravura ensemble dance. Here, the song is a little bit lackluster, and you pine for the highly stylized original, Worse, it’s Tony and Riff, a couple of Jets relegated to onlookers, gymnastically squaring off over a gun. 

Finally, the placement of “I Feel Pretty” is awkward, falling right after the rumble. It’s a delicate, ingenious number, but you are jarred to be placed into such a moment of hope and beauty given where Spielberg has taken you tonally just seconds before. 

Everyone is good and despite my fears, Rita Moreno as Doc’s widow never nears gimmick (she’s a lock for best supporting actress ). The picture is perhaps not doing as well as it would with a marquee name (Elgort is the best known of the young troupe and that ain’t saying much). But one can hope it makes stars, in particular, Rachel Zegler as Maria and Ariana DeBose as Anita. It is difficult to take your eyes off of either. Zegler was selected from over 30,000 applicants for the role and invests Maria’s innocence with a blossoming independence and steel that pays off ten-fold in “A Boy Like That.” DeBose is never less than commanding. And, unlike the original, they, like all the actors, expertly do their own singing.

What is good:  the song-and-dance numbers are assured and fun, the melding of animation and reality is deft, and it is for the most part very pleasant.

What is bad:  you don’t remember one of the tunes upon exiting the theater; it is very long and the plot, such as it is, is ragged; Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) comes off as kind of bitchy, with no real affection for the family; the father (Ben Whishaw) is a pitiful whiner; Lin Manuel-Miranda would have been better off writing the musical numbers rather than offering his version of the cockney lamplighter (that version has said lamplighter on MDMA with an accent rivaling that of Kevin Costner in Robin Hood for authenticity); and Meryl Streep is shoehorned into the picture as a gypsy, replete with her own hammy, endless, obnoxious number.

The opening scene of this love letter to Hollywood – a song and dance number on a jam packed LA freeway – is so audacious and expertly rendered that you almost regret its placement, fearing the rest of the film will never be able to match such perfection. When it is followed by another number that takes us from our heroine’s (Emma Stone) apartment to an industry pool party, your fears are alleviated. Thereafter,  the film becomes more personal, relying heavily on the chemistry between Stone and Ryan Gosling (chemistry that was established in a prior film, Crazy Stupid Love) while telling a standard tale of reaching for fame, compromising dreams for money and security, and the wages of those endeavors on true love.

I thought director Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash was the best film of 2014, and others clearly trust his judgment, because his second effort is as risky a gamble as you can make – a modern musical. It works on almost every level. As stated, the romantic leads are compelling and it is clear they connect. Stone is notable, near heartbreaking, as the aspiring actress.  The musical numbers are intricate and dazzling. The quieter moments, including several standard taps and waltzes, are beautifully done, and serve not only as support for their love, but as homage to the musicals that came before. And Los Angeles, as a fantastical costar, is charmingly rendered.

Chazelle showed a competency with music and movement in Whiplash but nothing in that film necessarily suggested the ability to stage the intricate, edit-free song and dance numbers that serve as the heart of this film.  Filming a stationary jazz drummer is elemental stuff compared to the sequences in this picture.

It really is a joy. If I have a criticism, it is simply one of imbalance. The first two numbers are so bravura, you end up waiting for one or two more of the same. When they do not appear, it is not a knock on what replaced them. But the tone is quieter, and the story pretty unoriginal. So I found myself waiting for the knockout punch that never comes. That is on me, not Chazelle, as he opted for a more muted, bittersweet conclusion which is affecting in its own right.

Gosling and Stone do all of their own singing; what is on the screen is all the more impressive given the film’s relatively meager $30 million budget; and the movie is shot in Cinemascope, which broadens its impact (unlike Quentin Tarantino’s 70mm The Hateful Eight, Cinemascope is actually suited to this film’s movement and locale). One of the best films of the year.

It can be clever, and the intersection of several fairy tales is occasionaly ingenious.  But there are no standout numbers (indeed, the movie appears to have cut the best song), and a musical rises or falls on its music.  The “Into the Woods” riff that snakes through the movie becomes tiresome, there are too few interesting exchanges between the characters, there is an entirely unnecessary and intrusive narration and the entire thing feels small.  It’s also not very funny, and from what I can see from the stage play, it’s supposed to be.

Though he’s been off his game of late, this project would have been better in the hands of Tim Burton.

Backstory: after The Monster and Will Will Kill, the film world has been anticipating Will Larroca’s third feature, House of Blood.  I can report that principal photography began today.

But that’s not the news.  Apparently, Larroca had been secretly working in Europe over the summer . . . on a psychedelic musical: The Hugginns Movie.  He was not happy at all with the results, shelved the entire project and has been litigating to have his name taken off of it.  Still, a copy has now been made public and is setting up roots on the Internet.

Two words: mind blown.  I don’t understand Larroca’s objections, and I know auteurs can be idiosyncratic, but if he deems this a failure, I can’t wait for the film he deems worthy.