The Ottery
“If an otter can’t have fun doing something, it just simply won’t do it.”

Superman vs. The Producers

June 5th, 2006

I’m not really comparing them because, well, that would be stupid. They just happen to be the two movies I saw this weekend. And I just happened to like one better than the other. Guess which.

Here’s a snippet of dialogue showing how movie-watching sometimes goes at the Otter-Porpoise household:

[Lois Lane is dangling out of a helicopter, Superman has just donned his little suit and is making his first public appearance, and we’re seeing the stunned faces of Metropolites below.]

Otter: Hey, wait a minute, was that Ben Vereen? [dives for the remote control and skips back a few seconds]

Porpoise: [shocked silence, unnoticed by Otter]

Otter: I think that’s him!

Porpoise: [reclaiming remote] Please don’t ever do that again.

Otter: What?

Porpoise: It’s only the most important moment in the whole movie!

Otter: Huh? [already trying to remember in which years Vereen was nominated for a Tony]

Most of you know my undying love for Broadway musicals, which is why I hope you won’t be shocked at my heretical priorities. And I don’t have much to say about Superman (1978) except that it bored me silly (sorry—maybe you had to see it as a kid to appreciate it) and that I’m relieved that Rory Gilmore’s recent, rather unappealing hairstyle can at least be explained as tribute to the 1978 Lois Lane’s locks (I mean, they’re both journalists, right? Am I on to something here?).

But, oh, I was overjoyed when “Z” and “A” brought The Producers to share with us! You can probably tell from many of my recent posts that I’ve been dying for a good ol’ musical, and I finally got my wish. I’ve only seen snippets of the original, primarily non-musical, movie, and I never saw the stage show, so this was my first exposure to the phenomenon (except for my Jewish friends in high school choir, who would quite often break into “Springtime for Hitler”).

The recent movie musical (with Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane, stars of the smash Broadway show) got mediocre reviews, and many critics cited overacting as the reason. “Z” and I found ourselves asking, “Have they ever seen a musical?”

Admittedly, the movie was a bit slow to start out, but Porpoise says the original is somewhat plodding, too. Things pick up once the singing and dancing start, which makes sense, considering that director Susan Stroman is primarily known for her choreography. In addition to The Producers, she choreographed the revival of Oklahoma (yes, the one starring Hugh Jackman!) and the movie Center Stage (which was dumb, but which did have some amazing dance scenes). I’m a fan.

As far as a film, The Producers may have some big flaws—I don’t know. I just enjoyed the silliness (an aware silliness, as opposed to certain other movies currently in theaters). “Springtime for Hitler” is, of course, as hilariously gauche as ever, but for me, one of the highlights was seeing Nathan Lane’s sung monologue summarizing the entire show up to that point. As Porpoise said, “I think every musical needs one of those.” Porpoise, for the record, liked The Producers well enough to give it four out of five stars.

No reviewer can fail to mention The Producers’ strange journey from movie to stage musical to musical movie—and a similar fate awaits Hairspray, which will soon (once again) be a movie, this time starring John Travolta. It’s an interesting pattern, considering that movie musicals (with the obvious exception of Chicago) don’t seem to do very well critically anymore. Rent. The Phantom of the Opera. Evita. All got mediocre-or-worse reviews. And, at least in the case of The Phantom of the Opera, most of the reviewers I read admitted that they didn’t like the stage musical in the first place. How can the movie musical get a fair rap these days, when our aesthetic is in so many ways anti-everything-that-a-musical-is?

However, Broadway shows are so expensive now that movies may be the only access that most of us have. I just heard someone reminiscing on the documentary Broadway: The Golden Age that, in 1949, it cost two dollars to see a movie in the cinema and 85 cents to see a Broadway show. Sigh. And yet, instead of bringing stage musicals to the screen, the current trend seems to be more in the direction of translating movies onto stage (in addition to The Producers and Hairspray, there’s The Full Monty, Billy Elliot, and scads of animated Disney movies).

What do y’all think about the current relationship between stage and screen? About the current state of musicals as a whole? I ask as someone who, for years, hasn’t been able to afford tickets for live musicals.

By the way, I haven’t been able to verify whether Ben Vereen does indeed have an uncredited cameo in Superman. However, he does appear in PBS’s fabulous miniseries Broadway: The American Musical, which I highly recommend not only as a retrospective of musicals but also as an interesting look at U.S. social history.

Entry Filed under: Movies, Uncategorized