Hal King (2021)

IMDb plot summary: Hal King is a film musical; an epic coming of age romance set in the late 1950s beatnik jazz scene.

Directed by Myron Davis. Starring Sophia Stephens, Richard Phillis, and J. Ivy.

Hal King is a musical retelling of Shakespeare's Henry IV and V, set in the African-American jazz scene of the 1950s. Hal is the partying-hard son of a man running for political office, who has to take up his father's mantle after his death. The movie is entirely sung through with primarily an R&B musical style. I went into this blind and was delighted to find it was not only a musical, but a musical setting of Shakespeare. It's an ambitious and interesting concept, and I wish the execution followed through. The sung dialogue bits in between major songs are incredibly tuneless and repetitive, and many of the actual songs don't offer much more, though there are a couple good ones. The choreography and blocking are decidedly not great (surprising, since the choreographer has some Broadway cred!) and, weirdly, the ensemble scenes *don't have enough people*, and so I'm left trying to assess the actual popularity of Hal's jazz poems or his father's political campaign when their audience is less than a dozen people. It's the kind of thing you can get away with in theater but is a jarring disconnect set against these more realistic set pieces. I really WANT to love this but it doesn't make it there.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Hal King < Gas Food Lodging

Hal King > Cassandra's Dream

Hal King < Batman: Under the Red Hood

Hal King > Sweet and Lowdown

Hal King > Crash (2004)

Hal King > Little Big League

Hal King > Three Days of the Condor

Hal King < National Treasure

Hal King > Red Notice

Hal King < No Sudden Move

Hal King < A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Hal King < Run Lola Run

Final spot: #2219 out of 3518, or 37%.