IMDb plot summary: When the leading lady of a low-budget musical revue sprains her ankle, the assistant stage manager is forced to understudy and perform in her place, becoming a star and finding love in the process.
Directed by Ken Russell. Starring Twiggy, Christopher Gable, Max Adrian, and Bryan Pringle.
This is a loose adaptation of a Broadway musical that was a pastiche of 1920s musical comedy, but in the film version we are seeing the story of a theater troupe putting on that musical with a Hollywood casting director in the audience. The result is over two hours of watching people uncomfortably, deliberately hamming up an already-hammy script, and it's one of the cringiest things I think I've ever watched. I felt like I was in the audience of an absolute trainwreck of a show, and it wasn't entertaining, just unpleasant. Some of the dancing is quite nice, and the songs might have been if they weren't mostly performed in obnoxious "character voices." The weirdest thing to me of all of this is that the show was a parody of hammy shows in the first place, and that style is serve best by embracing the cheesiness of it, not by creating a frame work in which it appears clear that you're mocking it. This reads like the director absolutely *loathed* the original play and decided to transport the hideousness he saw in his mind to the film so we'd all hate it too. Well... I mean, it worked. But was that anyone's actual goal here? Probably not.
How it entered my Flickchart:
The Boy Friend < One, Two, Three
The Boy Friend < Horton Hears a Who
The Boy Friend < VeggieTales: The Star of Christmas
The Boy Friend > The Art of War
The Boy Friend > Get Carter
The Boy Friend < Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
The Boy Friend > Metal Tornado
The Boy Friend > Nell
The Boy Friend > 8 1/2
The Boy Friend > The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
The Boy Friend < Mr. Mom
Final spot: #2956 out of 3316, or 11%.
No comments:
Post a Comment