Les Misérables‬

Oh the Agony
They Don’t Call it “Les Mis” for Nothing

Audiences new to Boubil & Schoenberg’s stage musical — based on Victor Hugo’s novel of historical fiction — may be surprised to discover the wooly narrative isn’t as compelling as they imagined it might be.

The era is 19th-century post-revolutionary France. A villainous police inspector [Javert – Russell Crowe] keeps up his inexplicably motivated lifelong vendetta against Jean Valjean (flawlessly played and sung by Hugh Jackman). Valjean spent 19 years slaving away under Javert’s brutality in Toulon prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s child. Upon his release, Valjean breaks his parole. When the desperate ex-convict attempts to steal silver from a church, the priest there forgives the arrested Valjean. The man of God goes further. He gives Valjean two expensive silver candlestick holders. Informed of his freshly imposed duty to God, Valjean turns over his life. Eight years later he is mayor of a small French village. The plot skips through eight-year time lapses. Javert stays hot on Valjean’s trail. The benevolent Valjean adopts Cosette (well played by Isabelle Allen and Amanda Seyfried), the daughter of Fantine (Anne Hathaway), a young woman who perishes as a direct result of Jean’s involuntary response regarding an incident at the factory where she worked. More eight-year leaps and the womanly Cosette falls in love with Marius (Eddie Redmayne) a student revolutionary.

That’s the gist. However, that synopsis doesn’t reveal how mundane the songs sound — regardless of their bombastic arrangements. Then there’s director Tom Hooper’s tendency to reduce big-spectacle settings into a claustrophobic experience. Extended close-ups of the actors’ faces hitting their notes accumulate toward an audience-distancing effect. The visual impression loses context over time because the audience is left to be fixated on every wrinkle on Anne Hathaway’s lips.

Nonetheless, Hooper’s style works whenever Hugh Jackman is on screen — which thankfully is much of the time. I can’t think of a more capable or ideal actor who could have given such an exquisite singing and acting performance. Every time the epic story threatens to lull you to sleep, Hugh Jackman snaps you back with his commanding presence in his soul-baring role.

Hooper’s ambitious decision to record all of the singing performances live — rather than record them in the studio and have the actors lip-sync to them — does render some remarkable results. Samantha Barks’s rendition of “On My Own” is a showstopper due to the Manx singer’s remarkable display of restrained emotion that seeps out amid her flawless phrasing. But the live singing aspect also has the effect of exposing flaws, as with Russell Crowe’s hesitant baritone, or Eddie Redmayne’s pained efforts.

Tom Hooper’s film version of Les Misérables is an entertaining experience, but you might start to nod off from time to time. The film’s opening shot of hundreds of prisoners pulling a giant ship into dock is worth the price of admission alone. Sacha Baron Cohen adds considerably to the film’s much-needed area of comic relief as Thenardier, a pickpocket innkeeper with an equally skilled wife (played by the ever persuasive Helena Bonham Carter). All of the ensemble performances are solid, even if Russell Crowe’s effort is forced and stiff. You won’t leave the cinema humming any “memorable tune” from the show. You will, however, have newfound respect for Hugh Jackman. Daniel Day Lewis has some competition after all.

Rated PG-13. 157 mins. (B-) (Three Stars - out of five/no halves)

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Any Day Now

It’s rare to come across such a unique cinematic gem as director/co-screenwriter Travis Fine’s riveting drama about a ‘70s era gay couple’s attempt to adopt a boy with Down syndrome. Alan Cumming gives a superb performance as Rudy Donatello, a Los Angeles lip-synch drag singer who discovers romantic and paternal love. 

Queens-transplant Rudy lives in a single room occupancy where his drug-abusing neighbor Marianna (Jamie Anne Allman) abandons her mentally challenged son Marco (Isaac Leyva) after her incarceration. Rudy sees through Marco’s disability to the sweet soul that resides within. Indeed, Isaac Leyva's performance substantiates Rudy's insights. A concurrent meet-up between Rudy and Paul (Garrett Dillahunt – “Winter’s Bone”), a gay L.A. district attorney, quickly blossoms into a stable relationship from which the couple attempt to provide a permanent home for Marco.

Garrett Dillahunt’s performance is a revelation. Not only does the objectively brawny actor evince compassion, but he shares a tangible chemistry with Cumming. The on-screen relationship represents a thoroughly believable vision of gay romantic love. Germane musical set pieces intersperse the story, allowing Alan Cumming to tear up the proscenium stage with haunting songs performed in character. Dramatic narrative depth arises from the layers of necessary emotion Cumming puts into the songs that he lip-syncs and the ones he actually sings. You’ve never witnessed a more searing rendition of “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore.” As for Cumming’s knockout performance of the film’s closing song, I’ll leave you to discover that reward without spoiling the surprise.

“Any Day Now” is a powerful independent film that could slip through the cracks. It is also a significant addition to the cannon of LGBT cinema. If you have a chance to see it on the big screen, don’t pass it up. I guarantee you will be moved.

Rated R. 97 mins. (A) (Five Stars - out of five/no halves)

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Pitch Perfect

Girl Power
Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson Save A Cappella Comedy
Pitch Perfect
By Cole Smithey

Essentially a glorified episode of the television show “Glee,” “Pitch Perfect” is a spotty coming-of-age comedy that only marginally pays off on its promise of delivering harmonized vocal virtuosity.

Barden University freshman Beca (played by current it-girl Anna Kendrick) is an aspiring musical composer with great pipes. Beca knows her pop music hits. She makes mean mixes on her computer and presents them for airplay on the college radio station. Petite Beca joins the school’s all-girl a cappella group The Barden Bellas in the hopes of upgrading the group’s less-than-modern song selection to claim victory at the upcoming national a cappella competition. A talented all-boys rival team — The Treblemakers — stands in their way. A hint of dweeb romance peeks between Beca and singing rival Jesse (Skylar Astin), as an addendum to the film’s overused competition plot device. Note to Hollywood: no more dance-offs or sing-offs, or anything-offs — ever again.

Anna Kendrick reinforces her reputation as a cinematic force of nature, performing impressive singing duties against a variety of musical styles. An uncomfortable dorm shower-singing scene hints at potentially bawdier comic material that ended up on the cutting room floor. The film’s blithe jibes of sexual innuendo and barf-spouting gags percolate through the Bella’s arsenal of quirky character traits.

Rebel Wilson’s hilarious Fat Amy disarms any would-be detractors by beating them to the punch. She introduces herself as “Fat Amy,” rather than tolerate any backbiting insults regarding her plump body size. The ploy works. Wilson’s sarcastic British accent comes to comic advantage in more than a few of Fat Amy’s well-placed quips about such things as her naturally endowed ability for washing cars – “squeak.” Hana Mae Lee’s mousy Lily speaks and sings in a tiny voice through which she sometimes discloses horrific facts about her self — “she ate her twin sister in the womb.” The asymmetrical humor works all the better because you have to be ready for it when it comes.

Choreographed bouts of a cappella versions of songs such as “The Sign” and “Right Round” come and go like commercial breaks. The highlight of the melodious sequences comes midway through the movie when Barden’s rival a cappella teams square off for an impromptu “riff-off” inside the acoustically resonate surroundings of an empty swimming pool. A call for “80s hits” sets off a re-harmonized medley of songs like Toni Basil’s “Mickey,” Madonna’s obligatory “Like a Virgin,” and Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot.” The stakes get upped when a call for “songs about sex” inspires our college-age singers to indulge in pulpy versions of “Let’s Talk About Sex” and “Feels Like the First Time.”

An unmistakable similarity to the music used in the recent “Rock of Ages” does “Pitch Perfect” no favors. When the movie finally slides into its ostensibly acoustic a cappella climax, the obvious addition of bass and drums deflates some of the scene’s musical magic. Even though “Pitch Perfect” never goes far enough with the complexity of its musical compositions, there are enough peppy song versions and laugh-inciting moments to keep you entertained.

Rated PG-13. 112 mins. (B-) (Three Stars - out of five/no halves)

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WEST SIDE STORY - CLASSIC FILM PICK

Indisputably the greatest musical ever made, “West Side Story” (1961) has sadly proven socially timeless regarding America’s eternally troubled immigrant experience. After becoming a Broadway hit in 1957, and winning over London theater audiences in 1958, it was inevitable that “West Side Story” would get the big-budget Hollywood film treatment. Leonard Bernstein’s powerful orchestral music swells under Stephen Sondheim’s impeccable narrative-driving lyrics in order to transform Arthur Laruents’s “Romeo and Juliet”-inspired tale of doomed love on Manhattan’s city streets into a film that transcends the musical genre.

A haunting line graphic dares the viewer to guess at its oddly familiar design while the film’s opening medley plays for several minutes. Color light filters switch with changes in tempo. When the outline eventually transitions into a north-facing aerial view of ’60s era Manhattan, the effect is surprising for the modern setting that appears. The bird’s-eye vantage point settles on an Upper West Side neighborhood ruled by a gang of white hoodlums called the Jets. A rival gang of Puerto Rican boys who call themselves the Sharks pose an imagined threat. It’s a time when every skinny urban teen male dresses like James Dean’s character in “Rebel Without a Cause.” The spot-on casting of triple-threat actors whose brilliant execution of Jerome Robbins’s modern dance moves sweeps you up into the stylized action filmed on actual New York City streets. The actual area underwent a radical urban renewal project for Lincoln Center that wiped away all evidence of the battleground where the story takes place.

Russ Tamblyn’s charismatic Riff leads the Jets though Richard Beymeymer’s Tony is the gang’s aging governor. Tony has romance on the brain when the rival gangs attend a Saturday night dance where Natalie Woods’s Puerto Rican Maria is in attendance. Love-at-first-sight puts Maria and Tony on cloud nine. Naturally, Maria is sister to the Sharks leader Bernardo (George Chakiris). Just as the young lovers dream of a future together, the Sharks and the Jets are planning a rumble.

“West Side Story’s” magnificent blend of modern dance and Caribbean music, with Shakespearian underpinnings, provides an ideal platform for its dynamic dancing actors to shine. Natalie Wood singing with a Puerto Rican accent is every bit as captivating as Rita Moreno’s feisty mambo dance moves as Maria’s sister Anita. Although Jerome Robbins was pulled off the film in order for Robert Wise to take over directing duties, Robbins’s choreography is stunning. The film’s Technicolor treatment delivers a richness of color and depth of image that thrills. As the winner of more Oscars than any other musical film, “West Side Story” is the standard that all others must be judged by.

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ROCK OF AGES

‘80s Hair Band Fiesta
Broadway Musical Adaptation Leaves a Wet Spot
By Cole Smithey

Based on Chris D’Arienzo’s campy Broadway musical, “Rock of Ages” is a gaudy, spirited exhumation of music that many would prefer to forget ever existed. Famously described by Elvis Costello as the “decade that music forgot,” this version of the '80s are distilled into a collection of hard rock anthems by the likes of Bon Jovi, Foreigner, Journey, Twisted Sister, and Poison. Even within the realm of hair metal, tastes differ. D’Arienzo could have at least included a song or two from Hanoi Rocks or The Lords of the New Church for their accredited punk glam appeal.

A Sunset Strip-based musical—circa 1987—constructed around songs like “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “Any Way You Want It” isn’t a recipe for a great story. The movie version is left to inject a clumsy narrative with some much-needed kitsch via a litany of stunt casting choices. Contributing screenwriters Justin Theroux and Allan Loeb seem to have polished up the source material with a dose of witty throwaway lines in an attempt to juice up the humor.

Nonetheless, the overlong movie frequently stalls in mid-song as during Mary J. Blige’s set piece, which suffers the misfortune of arriving just when the movie should be wrapping up.

Most of the action is contained in a raucous Sunset Strip bar called The Bourbon Room (clearly modeled on LA’s Whiskey a Go Go). A less-paunchy-than-usual Alec Baldwin plays aging hippie club owner Dennis Dupree with a goofy twinkle in his eye. Baldwin earns some well-deserved chuckles during comical character-revealing scenes played opposite bar manager Lonny (exquisitely played by the suitably cast Russell Brand). Dennis and Lonny share a special secret. Paul Giamatti does a deft turn as Paul Gill, the slimy music biz manager to Tom Cruise’s slothful heavy metal rock-god Stacee Jaxx. Cruise is easily ten years too old for the part. You can see his once youthful looks cracking around the edges of his face as he goes defiantly over the hill right before your eyes.

Catherine Zeta-Jones turns up the heat in her fired-up role as Patricia Whitmore, a Bible-thumping wife to LA’s newly elected mayor (played by an underused Bryan Cranston). Patricia has personal reasons for wanting to take Stacee Jaxx down a few rungs from his towering ladder of fame and sex appeal. As the site of Stacee’s last band appearance on his way to going solo, the Bourbon Room is Patricia’s prime target for immediate closure.

Vapid romance ensues between Detroit transplant/Bourbon Room barback Drew Boley (charmingly played by teen heartthrob Diego Boneta) and Kansas-escapee Sherie Christian (Julianne Hough). Both are aspiring singers, and Drew is the songwriter of the couple. An acoustic version of the first bars of “Don’t Stop Believin,’” that Drew sings to Sherie under LA’s iconic HOLLYWOOD sign, segues into a joke as he explains that the song goes “on and on and on and on.” Boneta and Hough don’t share enough screen chemistry to raise audience expectations. The fickle condition could be chalked up to the structure of a musical theatrical piece unfriendly to filmic adaptation.

Choreographer-turned-director Adam Shankman (“Hairspray)” is unable to prevent the film’s domino-cascade of two dozen musical set pieces from turning into a visual and aural drone. Still, “Rock of Ages” has enough panache and chutzpah from its well-oiled cast to make for an entertaining good time. Sure, the structure is off and the music is bland, but a centerpiece pool-table sex scene between Stacee Jaxx and Malin Akerman’s sultry Rolling Stone reporter Constance Sack leaves a wet spot.

Rated PG-13. 123 mins. (B-) (Three Stars - out of five/no halves)

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Burlesque

At nearly two-hours long, "Burlesque" has a decent 90-minute musical hiding somewhere in it. Born of every campy musical cliché, the story follows singer/dancer Ali (Christina Aguilera) from her truck-stop-diner existence in Iowa to Los Angeles where she stumbles across a dance club called the Burlesque Lounge. It's a swanky place owned and operated by a serious force of nature named Tess (well played by Cher). Although it's a far toss from the mid-20th-century style of "burlesque" it pretends to represent, Ali makes herself a permanent fixture as a self-appointed cocktail waitress chomping at the bit for a chance to prove her abilities. Aguilera performs eight of the film's ten set-piece songs, leaving Cher to take honors with two bang-up anthems "Welcome to Burlesque" and "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me." When either performer is on the cabaret stage, the movie transforms into a brilliant showcase for their overflowing talent. Then it evaporates quick as roller blinds with meandering subplots about things like the threat of Tess having to sell the club, and Ali's romantic connection to two disposable male characters. The biggest gyp is the lack of a duet between Cher and Aguilera, whose naturally compatible voices seem to promise just such a harmonic resolution. "Burlesque" never approaches the naughty complexity of "Cabaret" or the precision of "Chicago." For director/screenwriter Steve Antin to approach such musical high-stakes without his A-game is unforgivable.

Rated PG-13. 100 mins. (C) (Two Stars - out of five/no halves)

Nine

In 2005 director Rob Marshall had a runaway hit with his film version of the Broadway musical "Chicago." Let's hope he enjoyed it. If a Broadway musical loosely based on Federico Fellini's 1963 deconstructionist masterpiece "8 1/2" sounds like a recipe for disaster, it is. As if 2009 needed one more nine-related movie title--we've already suffered through "$9.99," "District 9," "Cloud 9," and the animated travesty "9"--Marshall and his crew run through every musical set-piece as though checking off a list that leads to the grave. Where "8 1/2" captured the zeitgeist of '60s Italian tedium, "Nine" is a self-conscious, wrongheaded attempt at riding Fellini's coattails with musical numbers that fawn over every Italian cultural touchstone satirized by the original. "Nine" is constructed around Daniel Day-Lewis's knock-off of Marcello Mastroianni's Guido Anselmi (here the Fellini alter-ego is named Guido Contini). The seven muses in Guido's rudderless life each get a chance to sing and dance their reason for existence, namely their love of Guido. As Guido's haughty mother Sophia Loren strikes museum-quality poses, Stacy Ferguson (a.k.a. Fergie) goes hog wild as a half-remembered and half-dressed nymphomaniac from Guido's childhood. Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, and Marion Cotillard attempt to out-hot one another in steamy routines filmed with clinical precision. By trying to reconstitute the essence of Fellini during a crucial period of artistic anxiety, the writers of "Nine" have missed the point entirely. Bad enough that such a mockery was presented on Broadway, but now there's a film that mocks Fellini's genius with confused reverence for his seminal work. Daniel Day-Lewis's weak embodiment of Marcello Mastroianni is disconnected from what should have been a man with too much imagination. Very sad.

Rated PG-13. 118 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

Dancer in the Dark

Danish writer/director Lars von Trier completes his Gold Heart trilogy (behind Breaking the Waves and The Idiots) with a tragic melodrama thinly disguised as a musical. Forget that Dancer in the Dark garnered the coveted Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for Best Film, and provided Icelandic rock singer/cum actress Bjork the prize for Best Actress. It’s a movie that audiences find at turns to be simultaneously boring and exasperating, while at the same time, paradoxically original and emotionally wrenching. By setting the story in a 1962 Washington state that never existed, von Trier casts a multi-national shadow of social satire over a thought provoking film that pushes cinema off the edge again and again.

Rated R. 141 mins. (A-) (Four Stars)

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Classic Film Pick)

Like the hugely successful B-Movie that inspired it, Harry Novak's 1965 sexploitation classic "Kiss Me Quick!" "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" is an exploitation film that draws on a grab-bag of social identifiers to expand on conventional hypocrisies with more than just a nudge and a wink. Writer/composer/actor Richard O'Brien's 1973 British stage play became a hit and the play's director Jim Sharman wisely insisted on using the original cast, with the exception of American newcomers Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick, when time came to direct the film version in 1975. Famous as more of a social phenomenon than as a great piece of cinema, I would argue that The Rocky Horror Picture Show is both thanks to an inspired musical score, and unforgettable camp performances. As part of the '70s midnight movie craze that coincided with the advent of punk music, the film attracted a playful young audience more than prepared to interact with it's innuendo-riddled dialogue around a fetish-based story about an alien transvestite from the galaxy of Transylvania called Dr. Frank N. Furter (played with Mick Jagger charm by Tim Curry) who seduces two stranded newlywed visitors to his castle where he creates life in the form of a chiseled male named Rocky Horror. This is a movie you have to see with an audience.

(A-) (Four Stars)

A Knight's Tale

Heath Ledger does a pretty good movie-star poker face and has that rakish Australian swagger that pop movie audiences gravitate toward. Behind the failure of "10 Things I hate About You" and a near miss with "The Patriot," Ledger digs his stakes deep into a movie designed purely for teen idol gratification. "A Knight's Tale" is a cinematic defilement that plays under a banner of a "rock & roll fairy tale." Set in 14th century Europe, a crowd of period costumed spectators clap and chant to Queen's stadium rabble rouser "We Will Rock You" at a jousting tournament. What follows are a long string of '70s songs, like David Bowie's Golden "Years," playing while Ledger's William Thatcher (any relation to Margaret?), a poor commoner and former footman to a real Knight, begins his own illegal (as he is not of Royal descent) jousting career. Endless jousting tournaments transpire with lots of balsa wood jousting poles splintering across the screen. It's a classic example of a "'what-on-earth-were-they-thinking" movie that no group of filmmakers and actors could have ever pulled off with much success.
Rated PG-13. 132 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

Tosca

Benoit Jacquot (“School of Flesh”) directs this stylistically challenging cinematic rendering of Giacomo Puccini’s famous 1899 opera with an appropriately powerful performance by opera diva Angela Gheorgiu. Nineteenth century Rome is the setting for the story in which Tosca (Gheorgiu) is humiliated by a sadistic police chief who taunt s her with freeing her lover (Roberto Alagna) in trade for sexual favors. Jacquot combines black-and-white footage of the singers in a recording studio with shots of locations indigenous to the story, against scenes of the singers performing their roles in full costume while lip-syncing the lyrics. Much drama and bloodshed occurs in the film’s relatively short two-hour running time.
No Rating 119 mins. (C+) (Two Stars)

Duets

"Duets" is a frustratingly mediocre road movie that connects three unlikely pairs of people in the much maligned phenomenon of Karaoke singing as a metaphor for "finding the meaning of life" by sharing their interpretations of pop songs. Ragged plot threads hang in a script incapable of juggling its six characters. Maria Bello ("Coyote Ugly") is the surprise at the bottom of the box as Suzi Loomis, a tough chick who hustles her way through life with sex like a fisherman shucking oysters. Gwyneth Paltrow looks like she’s acting in every scene, and although her climax duet of Smokey Robinson’s "Cruisin,’" with father figure Huey Lewis, is pleasing in a soft-soap music video kind of way, it’s not enough bang to compensate for the slow pace that precedes the scene. "Duets" shows Paltrow to be not yet up to snuff in the leading lady arena. She’s easy enough on the eyes, but there’s just no there, there.
Rated R. 113 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

An American In Paris - Classic Film Pick

This musical precursor to the superior "Singing In The Rain," (also starring Gene Kelly) is marred by some iffy arrangements of Gershwin standards such as "I Got Rhythm" and "Our Love Is Here To Stay." The film's ridiculous 18-minute "ballet" that closes the festivities is the most ostentatious misappropriation of the form (ballet) ever done in cinema. Gene Kelly is impossibly charming as Jerry Mulligan, an American GI who remains in Paris after the war to study painting. Jerry's paintings catch the eye of a rich sponsor (Nina Foch) interested in all the Jerry she can buy, which turns out to be not too much when a young Leslie Caron steals Jerry's heart. George Guetary's singing scenes should have been left on the cutting room floor, but Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron are mesmerizing, and Oscar Levant is amusing as Jerry's piano playing buddy. "An American In Paris" (1951) swept the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Writing, Cinematography, Art Direction, Scoring, and Costume. 

Not Rated. 113 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

The Singing Detective

Robert Downey Jr. is in fine form as an alienated skin disease suffering hospital patient who finds refuge, and ultimately redemption, by imaging himself in the world of the pulp noir novels he’s written. Like a cross between “All That Jazz” and “Blue Velvet,” the story bounces between Downey’s bizarre reveries, past experiences and comical confrontations with his psychiatrist (Mel Gibson) that make up the best scenes in the movie. The film’s colorful song-and-dance set pieces rely on lip-synced ’50s songs that are the weakest link in a bumbling but gregarious movie.
Rated R. 109 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

Mamma Mia! The Movie

Once it gets past its high-pitched squeals of estrogen-fueled excitement in the opening sequences, director Phyllida Lloyd’s screen adaptation of the popular Broadway play based on Abba songs, settles into a harmonically pleasing musical comedy set amid the extraordinary beauty of the Greek isle of Skopelos. Former 80s’ girl-trio singer Donna (exquisitely played by the ever-surprising Meryl Streep) has single-handedly raised her daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) on the island where the two operate a hotel villa. On the eve of her marriage to local hunk Sky (Dominic Cooper), Sophie has used information she culled from her mom’s old diary to invite Donna’s three former boyfriends to the wedding in the hope of discovering her unknown father. Stellan Skarsgard, Pierce Brosnan, and Colin Firth do the honors as the trio of possible dads, and their arrival times well with that of Donna’s cherished band pals Rosie (Julie Walters) and Tanya (Christine Baranski). "Mamma Mia! The Movie" is tilted toward the play’s target of middle aged to elderly audience members, but that’s not to say there isn’t plenty of entertainment to be had for everyone else in this pop-tinged travelogue of Grecian opulence.

Rated PG-13, 108 mins. (B+) (Four Stars)

Sweeney Todd: The Demon of Fleet Street

Director Tim Burton’s screen adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 Grand Guignol musical is at once mesmerizing and disappointing. Outstanding singing performances from its gifted ensemble cast contrast unfavorably with Burton’s trademark affinity for a drab monochromatic color scheme of white, blue, brown and gray. Gallons of orange/red blood pour out beneath thankfully abbreviated songs performed in all-too-predictable orchestrations meant to cater to Broadway audiences familiar with the original Sondheim production. For such an idyllic gothic setting, Burton misses his cue to update the songs with reharmonized arrangements (including tempo and key changes) for a non-traditional orchestra that could have corrected the music’s tendency to slip into a drone of same-sounding tonality.

Rated R, 117 mins. (B) (Three Stars)

August Rush

A perfect example of everything wrong about Hollywood films, "August Rush" is an obstinately perverse, hammy piece of instant-gratification cinema that weeps from the screen as so much emotional sludge. Young Evan Taylor (Freddie Highmore) braves an orphanage existence with the abstract knowledge that he will eventually attract the attention of his biological parents if only he can compose, conduct and perform a piece of music that will harmonically draw them to him. Evan seems more touched in the head than in the ear when he runs away from the orphanage to Manhattan where he takes up residence with a freak of nature named the Wizard (Robin Williams) who runs a squatter’s music school for young runaways. Williams stinks up the movie with his signature range of character tics that are all the more disturbing for their violent subtext. Milquetoast Keri Russell and Jonathan Rhys Meyers play Evan’s ever-youthful parents Lyla and Louis who are torn apart by Lyla’s cruel father (William Sadler).

Rated PG, 133 mins. (D) (1 Star)

Dreamgirls

Set amidst the R&B heyday of the '60s, "Dreamgirls" is a musical that owes as much of its harmonious heritage to the Memphis Stax records sound as it does to the Motor City where the story takes place. Director Bill Condon (screenwriter on "Chicago") captures the musical set pieces with vitality as our trio of soul singers The Dreamettes climb the ladder of success before their leader Effie White (Jennifer Hudson) is kicked to the curb by the group's manager Curtis Taylor, Jr. (Jamie Foxx). By the time the ever-modulating songs start to expose their monotonous arrangements, it becomes clear that Effie's replacement Deena Jones (Beyonce Knowles) is no match for Jennifer Hudson in the singing or charisma departments. Eddie Murphy gives the strongest performance of his career as James "Thunder" Early, an aging James Brown kind of performer unable to adjust to the musical changes occurring around him. However, it is newcomer Jennifer Hudson who owns the movie with her magnetic presence and go-tell-it-on-the-mountain voice.         
Rated PG-13, 131 mins. (B-)

A Prairie Home Companion

Consummate blowhard radio personality Garrison Keillor sees his self-penned script fantasy about the final installment of his wispy radio show "A Prairie Home Companion" realized by Robert Altman. Just as the word "prairie" connotes Anglo pretension, Altman’s movie bounces between phony characters going through inflated backstage preparations before stepping onto Keillor’s stage at the Fitzgerald Theater to perform songs before a live audience marveling Keillor’s billowy enunciation of arcane references like "rhubarb pie." Tommy Lee Jones plays "The Axeman," a Texas real estate mogul anxious to raze the Midwest theater.

Rated PG-13. 105 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That

The Beastie Boys relive their former glories in an inspired live performance at Madison Square Garden on October 9, 2004 where 50 members of the sold-out audience use handheld cameras to capture the show. While the Beastie Boys are great at delivering their synchronized hip-hop songs, the band lacks sufficient musical variety to sustain a 90-minute movie. Necessarily low production values create viewer fatigue that takes its toll well before the final credits roll. "Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That" is the sole province of dyed-in-the-wool Beastie Boys fans.

Rated R. 90 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

Take The Lead

Since the success of last year’s dance documentary "Mad Hot Ballroom" Hollywood has thrown together a formulaic narrative riff on the idea of New York public school students learning ballroom dance as a way of socializing poor kids out of their lower class traps. Antonio Banderas saunters through his performance in a glorified rendition of real-life ballroom dance teacher Pierre Dulaine, who brings classical dance training to bear on a group of tin-eared hip hop-crazed high school misfits. Forget that the real life Dulaine taught much younger elementary school kids because this is by no means a biopic. Director of Photography Alex Nepomniaschy ("Narc") fumbles with where to put the camera to capture JoAnn Jansen’s ill-conceived choreography. Every sub-plot wilts on the vine in a redundant movie lacking narrative focus.

Rated PG. 108 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)