After the multiple Oscar wins of the 2002 movie version of the stage hit Chicago, there were hopes that this might mark a return of all but extinct form, the screen musical. Two more have duly just turned up in the US, and will soon be released here: The Producers – a musical itself based on a film comedy has gone full circle to become a film again, opening here on Boxing Day; while the film version of Jonathan Larson’s Rent finally reaches cinema screens over a decade after it first burst onto the New York stage.
I saw a press screening of The Producers yesterday, and although one of Broadway’s greatest love letters to itself has been faithfully reproduced in another medium, it may in fact be far too faithful. Susan Stroman (who also directed and choreographed the stage version) seems to have done little more than point a camera at her stage production; it has been scarcely opened out. Not only do all the sets look very ‘stagey’, but Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick – reprising their stage turns on screen – still seem at times like they’re playing to the back of the mezzanine (as they call the dress circle in New York). The performances are broad, and broadly funny; with material this good, it couldn’t fail to still be funny. But no extra dimension except historical preservation of a stage production seems to have been achieved – and may ultimately defeat the stage version, too.
Whereas Chicago on stage exists in an entirely different dimension of stripped-back immediacy to the film version that followed, and therefore saw the benefit of people who had enjoyed the film then wanted to catch it onstage, there isn’t much reason for them to do so now with The Producers. Why pay $100 on Broadway, or up to £49 in London, when you can go to the movies and see the identical product for $10.75 or £9?
I can understand your disappointment however I am not altogether surprised. The only musical film apart from CHICAGO in recent years that blows me away is EVITA. Alan Parker did a stunning job with it. However I wish the same could be said for the latest movie version of PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. Its bad enough that Loyld Webber thinks that every classic opera or story should be nothing more than a POP OPERA but I think that all that he managed to prove with PHANTOM was that every attempt at trying to making it into a MUSICAL FILM (including his own) has failed and will continue to do so, clearly there are certain musicals that simply just cannot transfer to a film format. CHICAGO and EVITA will always stand up and survive the test of time as excellent screen triumphs just like OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR, OLIVER and CABARET.
I remember well the first outing for "The Producers" and would have been prepared to bet serious money that no-one could ever top Zero Mostel in the Max Bialystock role. I would have lost. I spent the first 10 minutes of the movie making the inevitable comparisons between Mostel and Nathan Lane and then just gave up and let the tears of laughter stream down my face. The new material written by Brooks is great - the songs are wonderful - but the fact that I still laughed when Lane, pleading his poverty, complained "I'm wearing a cardboard belt!" even though I was mouthing the long-familiar line along with him, was due entirely to his bravura performance.
The film has been criticised for appearing too much like a stage play but, in my view, that is one of its strengths. Rarely am I engaged by a film to the same degree that the intimacy of a top-flight theatre production provides. It's also rare to hear applause for a performance outside of a theatrical environment. "The Producers" engages and it was a sheer pleasure to be in the cinema applauding the showstoppers and relentless barrage of gags along with the rest of the audience.
That audience ranged from 11 (my younger daughter)(okay, she's precocious!) to some old ladies sitting behind us who could have auditioned as Max's backers - with every age in between. I have never heard such laughter and applause in a movie theatre.
I take the reviewer's point that the movie perhaps renders going to see the play redundant. This, however, I would take as a compliment to the film. The cast were superb - my only reservations are that Uma Thurman's and Will Ferrell's parts were respectively a little under- and over-played. The central double act of Lane and Broderick is a masterpiece of comic timing in the interplay of roles. Nathan Lane deserves an Oscar but, unaccountably, nobody seems to be talking in those terms. Critics are giving the film bad to lukewarm reviews - from what I saw and heard in the movie theatre, the critics have got it all wrong. My opinion is one thing. A cinema full of people laughing fit to burst is quite another.