De-Lovely (2004)

IMDb plot summary: Inspecting a magical biographical stage musical, composer Cole Porter reviews his life and career with his wife, Linda.
Directed by Irwin Winkler, stars Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd.

De-Lovely does something for Cole Porter's songs that very few of Porter's musicals actually do: it gives those songs context. I've occasionally blogged about this before, but for me, musicals are most effective when the songs are given context within the plot. While so many of the songs in this show are sung at moments when they wouldn't need to be contextual (singers at clubs, rehearsing shows, characters performing at parties), whoever chose the songs chose well, because each one of those songs shines with context. The songs become poignant because of the story. I am not a Cole Porter fan, but I found myself very drawn to many of the songs in this movie, songs that I never have liked before. I am usually quite bored by "So In Love," and here I found it unbelievably sad and beautiful and moving. While the most transcendent musical numbers happen much too late in the movie for me to rank it very high, it still managed to make me at least like most of the songs. And this is why I love musicals. The story by itself is not that special. The songs by themselves are not that special. But when you combine the two, you get something very touching. 3.5 stars.

Best Part: Those final two musical numbers ("Blow, Gabriel, Blow" and "In the Still of the Night") were beautiful in two very different ways. What a way to end the movie.
Worst Part: You CANNOT take a songwriter like Cole Porter, whose main draw is the clever lyrics, and then speak over his songs. This happened several times and I got mad and then simply ignored the talking and paid attention to the music. Excuse me, if you're making a musical, you let me hear the songs.
Musical Theater Person Sighting: I used to do this on my old reviews! And there are quite a few here.  That's Jonathan Pryce (I saw him on Broadway once) as Cole Porter's musical guide. And John Barrowman as the guy who can't sing "Night and Day" (I recognized his singing before I recognized his face). And that's apparently Teddy Kempner as the stage manager (!).
Flickchart: #596, below Sunday in the Park With George and above National Treasure.