Showing posts with label Musicals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Musicals. Show all posts

Friday, November 3, 2023

BACK TO THE BEACH 1987


I've always been a huge fan of those Annette Funicello / Frankie Avalon Beach Party movies. As a staple of Saturday afternoon TV growing up, I looked forward to them for their terrific music, minimal clothing, rhythm-challenged dancers, and engagingly silly plotlines. Essentially live-action cartoons, these lowbrow, low-budget musical comedies were a great deal of mindless fun enlivened by a knowing, slapstick playfulness and an utter lack of pretension. 

Funnier and far more clever than they tend to get credit for, those Annette & Frankie films appealed to me because they always seemed to be in on the joke. Loaded with satirical pop culture references and characters who broke the 4th wall to address the audience, the scripts for these movies knew that they were just soggy, song-filled teen nonsense and seldom passed up an opportunity to poke fun at themselves.
Plus, for a budding cinephile like me, the bonus was having folks like Yvonne De Carlo, Buster Keaton, Elsa Lanchester, Dorothy Malone, Mickey Rooney, and Timothy Carey turn up in minor roles.  
Even as a kid (which wouldn't have been more than a few years after these films were made), I knew that the stiff-haired, clean-cut, parent-free, all-white world of sun, sand, and surfboards these movies took place in was wholly untethered to anything resembling a recognizable reality. (Indeed, the entire Beach Party series borders on absurdist.) But as far as I was concerned, the patent artificiality of it all was just another part of what made these charmingly corny movies so endearing. 
"Are we the corniest couple you've ever seen, or what?|"
In their solo movie appearances, preternaturally boyish Frankie Avalon and eternal girl-next-door Annette Funicello were charismatic as all get-out, but neither had me reaching for my dark glasses to shield me from their megawatt star quality. Annette, whom I've been in love with since her Mickey Mouse Club days, always seemed to level off at "favorite middle-school teacher in a pageant" appealing competency, while Frankie, as a solo screen presence, tended to give facetious, all-surface performances that oozed a vaguely smarmy vibe. 
But together, they were beach blanket magic.

There's an oft-repeated quote attributed to Katharine Hepburn relating to the onscreen chemistry of  Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: "He gave her class, and she gave him sex appeal."
I wish I could come up with something equally terse and succinct about Annette and Frankie's unique chemistry, for they were truly the heart of those Beach Party movies. They grounded the slapstick antics in something human. You liked them, you cared about them, and you were always rooting for them to end up walking off into the sunset together.  
Why did Annette and Frankie click? I dunno. The best I can manage is that Frankie took some of the starch out of Annette, and Annette made Frankie come across less (to borrow a line from Back to the Beach): "Like an Italian loan shark."
Hip To Be Square
Annette & Frankie made six Beach Party movies together, their final pairing in 1965. For many, this signaled the end of an era. But who would have guessed our suntanned sweethearts were saving the best for last? 
More than two decades after they wrote their last love letters in the sand, Funicello & Avalon reteamed in what both stars have called their favorite and best Beach Party movie: Back to the Beach
The debut feature film of Australian telejournalist, photographer, and short film/music video director Lyndall Hobbs, Back to the Beach is a candy-colored, polka-dotted slice of waggish-on-wry that good-naturedly spoofs '60s pop culture and the entire Beach Party genre. Serving up ample doses of surf, sand, songs, and silliness, Back to the Beach is also an affectionate tribute to its stars, who gamely and hilariously send up their own squeaky-clean images.

Annette Funicello as Annette
Frankie Avalon as The Big Kahuna
Connie Stevens as Connie

Costing more than all six Beach Party movies combined, Back to the Beach has Annette and Frankie recreating their singin' & surfin' screen alter egos twenty-two years after their final beach blanket kiss fade-out in 1965's How to Stuff a Wild Bikini. Unable to secure the rights to the characters they created in the original films (most often named Frankie & Dolores, aka " Dee Dee"), for Back to the Beach, Funicello goes by Annette, and Avalon's character isn't given a name at all. Billed in the credits as "Annette's Husband," Avalon is only referred to by his surfer glory days nickname, The Big Kahuna. A running gag has no one being able to get it right, calling him everything from The Big Chihuahua to The Big Caboose.
Demian Slade as Bobby
Serving double duty as narrator and audience surrogate, his sarcastic asides
 give us permission to laugh at Frankie & Annette's outmoded, absurdly wholesome image      
Lori Loughlin and Tommy Hinkley as Sandi and Michael
Now middle-aged and married with two kids, our one-time sun-loving, fun-loving couple have moved far from the beaches of California to suburban Ohio, where they live a life of pink-hued, mid-century modern splendor. But their lives have slipped into a rut. Frankie is a stressed-out used car salesman, Annette self-medicates her middle-class ennui with obsessive shopping (mainly for Skippy Peanut Butter), and their 14-year-old son Bobby (Demian Slade) is going through a rebellious stage (punk, I think) where he dresses like Alan Arkin in Wait Until Dark.
The solution for everybody is a much-needed Hawaiian vacation, but first, a quick detour to California to visit their college-age daughter Sandi (Lori Loughlin, decades before her association with the word “college” got all icky and felonious).
The Friendly Skies
And so, on the sunny shores of Malibu where it all began, our sand dune sweethearts of the Sixties revisit the past (old flame Connie Stevens); confront the present (their daughter did what Annette and Frankie never dared, shacked up with her fiancĂ©); and conquer old demons (surf-phobic Frankie squares off against the Humunga Cowabunga from Down Under). 
And along the way, to the rhythm of surf tunes, pajama parties, and celebrity cameos, love is rekindled, and a happy ending moral emerges: It's never too late to start creating your new "good old days," and when all is said and done, there's absolutely nothing wrong with being corny.


WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS MOVIE
As an unofficial Mouseketeer overenamored of '60s music, pop culture, Beach movies, and Annette Funicello, in particular, I would appear to have been the ideal demographic for Back to the Beach. But in truth, upon its release, I was among those who mistakenly thought they knew what to expect (i.e., something along the lines of those absolutely dreadful "nostalgia trot-out" TV-movie reunions for shows like Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best), so I avoided Back to the Beach like an oil spill. (My looss. I would have loved seeing this on the big screen.)
Joe Holland as Zed
A contemporary beach baddie to replace Eric Von Zipper
(the late, great Harvey Lembeck)

When I finally got around to seeing Back to the Beach on cable TV, I was overjoyed (and more than a little surprised) to discover how deftly this irresistible little gem of a movie subverted all of my expectations. Against all odds and statistical probabilities, Back to the Beach turned out to be this knowing, shrewdly clever, laugh-out-loud funny, musical parody of the entire Beach Party genre. A zany delight from start to finish, Back to the Beach somehow—without being cynical or superior—struck a tone that balanced affectionate nostalgia and mockingly self-referential humor in a manner that created a kind of comic bridge allowing folks who like Beach Party movies sincerely and those who like them ironically to both have a good time.
John Calvin as Troy
In what could be called the "Aron Kincaid" role, Calvin plays a beach lothario
who (in a welcome change from the traditional Beach Party fetishization
of the wriggling female backside) offers some equal opportunity eye candy
in his itsy bitsy, teenie weenie, yellow tiger-striped bikini.

It couldn't have been easy spoofing a genre that spent so much of its time spoofing itself (as Back to the Beach's small army of 17 credited screenwriters most certainly attests), but the payoff is that the jokes--all playfully poking fun at the fashions, mores, music, and relentless cheerfulness of the Beach Party movies--are so varied in approach that they lend the film a loony exuberance. A movie ahead of its time, there's culture clash comedy that predates The Brady Bunch Movie (1995) and snarky riff humor of the sort that would make TVs Mystery Science Theater 3000 into such a hit the following year.
Guitar Legends
Dick Dale ("King of the Surf Guitar") and Stevie Ray Vaughn
Dick Dale & His Del-Tones appeared in Beach Party and Muscle Beach Party

PERFORMANCES 
It has always been something of a fool's errand trying to figure out where the real Frankie and Annette began and where their images ended. While both stars made token bids at counterculture relevance in 1968 (Funicello in the psychedelic Monkees movie Head, Avalon in Otto Preminger's paean to LSD, Skidoo), by and large, the two always seemed comfortable (or resigned) to forever being linked to their screen personas.
This comfort is evident in the fun they two appear to be having skewering their own images in Back to the Beach. The script declares open season on everything from Frankie's helmet hair to Annette's legendarily ample figure (never in a way mean-spirited or at the cost of making them look ridiculous ), and the pair get into the spirit of the things in a way that reveals them to be good sports and possessors of a hipper sense of humor than they've been given credit for. 
It has the cumulative effect of humanizing them, and both stars come off the best they ever have on screen. 
O.J. Simpson's cameo ups Back to the Beach's felon count 


THE STUFF OF FANTASY 
Whatever type it is or whatever it's called, the comic sensibility 
of Back to the Beach is right up my alley. I love my nostalgia on wry. 
(The terrific Demian Slade has most of the best lines.)
Speaking of nostalgia, Back to the Beach is a boomer bonanza of '60s cameos. (Clockwise from top l.) Bob Denver & Alan Hale of Gilligan's Island; Don Adams of Get Smart; Tony Dow, Barbara Billingsley, & Jerry Mathers of Leave it to Beaver; and Edd Byrnes of 77 Sunset Strip.


THE STUFF OF DREAMS
What would a Beach Party movie be without music? In Back to the Beach, I like how the movie is a straight comedy until wound-tighter-than-mainspring Frankie drinks a Stunned Mullet at Daddy-O's and then launches into a rousing rendition of The Rivieras' "California Sun" with Connie Stevens. From then on, fun, colorful musical numbers pop up sporadically (but not nearly enough for my taste) throughout the rest of the film.
Frankie, Connie, and Annette all had Top Ten record  
hits during the late '50s and early '60s.
Annette updates her 1964 song "Jamaica Ska" with a  
little help from alt-rock band Fishbone 
Paul Reubens as Pee Wee Herman is joined by the cast to sing
 "Surfin' Bird."  Pee Wee's Playhouse had only premiered the year before. 
In 1988, Annette & Frankie were guests on the iconic Pee Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special
The cast sings "Some Things Live Forever," which failed to
make it to the film's soundtrack LP, but became a staple of 
Frankie & Annette's live concert "Back to the Beach Tour" 1989-1991

I blame it on our Culture of Closure, but there is an undeniable fantasy curiosity (among Boomers, especially) about the imagined futures of fictional characters from our pop culture past. Perhaps because these characters represented such wildly idealized visions of American life, gender roles, and traditional (conservative) values, pursuing the "Whatever became of?" is all about being reassured. 
If those eternal sweethearts Annette and Frankie finally got married and did indeed live happily ever after, then most certainly, those optimistic fantasies they promoted couldn't have been false. Could they?

A FEW OF MY FAVORITE JOKES


BONUS MATERIAL
Although I didn't see Back to the Beach until it began playing on cable TV, I recall at the time that it was heavily promoted with a soundtrack LP, TV commercials (with voiceover by Wolfman Jack), and ticket giveaways. Plus, as above-the-title stars and co-executive producers, Funicello and Avalon made themselves available for countless interviews and talk show appearances. But as director Lyndall Hobbs relates in the film's Blu-ray featurette, the eventual release of Back to the Beach was a virtual wipeout due to Paramount Studios' dwindling enthusiasm for their product. 
Polka Dot Paradise
You have to be a certain age (mine, apparently) to get that Sandi's friend Robin (far right -Laura Lanoil/Laura Urstein) is a throwback to Gidget's best friend Larue, who loved the beach but always wore a ton of clothes to protect her skin from the sun

Paramount (rightfully so, perhaps) saw Back to the Beach as a movie for the public, not the critics. The studio's eventual release strategy—declaring a media blackout and denying the press advance access to the film—may have succeeded in forestalling any anticipated bad reviews and granted their film an opening weekend driven by fan interest and word-of-mouth, but it also gave the impression that Paramount had given up on, or worse, was somehow embarrassed by, Back to the Beach.

Soundtrack LPs became essential movie marketing tools after Saturday Night Fever. The cover of the Back to the Beach album employs a tres-'80s Memphis Design whimsy to suggest the music's Old-School meets New Wave tone. My favorite track: David Kahne's "Sun, Sun, Sun, Sun, Sun," performed over the closing credits by Marti Jones. 

Further evidence of last-minute cold feet on Paramount's part is the fact that in Los Angeles, Back to the Beach was initially set to open on Friday, August 7, 1987, at the high-profile Mann’s Chinese Theater (as per the TWO full-page ads in the Sunday Times)in Hollywood. But opening day saw Mann's Chinese reluctant to relinquish its hold on the Ritchie Valens biopic La Bamba (then in its third week and the unanticipated sleeper hit of the summer) and bumping Back to the Beach to its less-prestigious sister theater, The Hollywood, just up the street. 
Director Lyndall Hobbs
It always surprised me that so little of Back to the Beach's advance publicity referenced its director. One would think that a woman making her feature film directorial debut (carrying her 4-month-old daughter on her hip, no less) with a $12 million musical comedy would be a made-to-order publicity angle. That is until I remembered how the $18 million 1978 Bee Gees musical Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band made its African-American director (Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame recipient Michael Schultz) its best-kept secret. (For his sake, in hindsight, perhaps that was a blessing.)
Lyndall Hobbs’ contributions to making Back to the Beach such a delight are incalculable (it was her idea to turn the script [co-authored by ex-husband Chris Thompson] into a musical), yet despite the film's emerging status as a cult hit, it has remained Hobbs’ sole feature film directing credit. 

For proof of what a miraculous feat and balancing act of nostalgia, music, and humor Back to the Beach truly is, one need look no further than the 1978 unsold TV pilot Frankie & Annette: The Second Time Around. Produced by Dick Clark, this labored, excruciatingly sincere 60-minute episode cast Annette as a Vietnam war widow working as a housemother at a girl's college dorm who reunites with her old flame, Frankie, now a failed pop singer.  A bid to cash in on the nostalgic goodwill ignited by Avalon's recent stint as Teen Angel in the hit movie Grease (1978), the program is 100% of what those Beach Party movies never were: boring.   

Annette and Frankie's final feature film appearance together was in the comedy Troop Beverly Hills (1989). It's a visual gag cameo that has the couple jogging outside The Beverly Hills Hotel, Annette breezily running along (in a hot pink tracksuit calling to mind Lisa Kudrow's "Aunt Sassy" in The Comeback)  singing her 1959 Top Ten hit "Tall Paul," while a winded and trailing Frankie calls out, "Annette, wait up!"  
The highlighting of Annette's effortless athleticism adds a note of bittersweet charm to this amusing coda to the duo's 26-year onscreen association, for in just three years, Funicello would go public with her MS (multiple sclerosis) diagnosis. The first symptoms of which she began to experience while making Back to the Beach. Annette Funicello passed away in 2013 at the age of 70. 

Annette Funicello was the eternal girl-next-door. She first married at age 22 on
Saturday, Jan. 9, 1965. On that day, this comic appeared in newspapers nationwide
.

Sure, maybe Annette & Frankie may have been the corniest couple I'd ever seen. 
But they were also one of the most endearing.   


Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2023

Sunday, December 18, 2022

WEST SIDE STORY 2021


At age 76, multi-Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg is a full 11 years my senior. But when it comes to our mutual, lifelong love affair/obsession with West Side Story, he's practically my twin.

Both of us were introduced to West Side Story at roughly the same impressionable age: Spielberg, when he was 10, via the original 1957 Broadway cast album his father brought home one day (Spielberg dedicates this film to his late father); me, at age 11, by way of the 1967 theatrical re-release of the 1961 Robert Wise/Jerome Robbins movie (detailed in an earlier post). The indelible impression this ingeniously urbanized, musicalized retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet made on our young imaginations—book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, original stage production conceived, choreographed, and directed by Jerome Robbins—easily branded West Side Story as the first musical crush for us both. 

And while I never got in trouble for singing "Gee, Officer Krupke" at the dinner table like Spielberg, I can certainly attest to having immersed myself in West Side Story's OST Lp with equally matched zeal and fervor. At 11-years-old, I may not have been able to memorize Joyce Kilmer's "Trees," but should anyone have asked, I could have easily recited the lyrics to every song from West Side Story.   
1957                                                 1961
Surprisingly, this awareness of a shared reverence for West Side Story did absolutely nothing to mollify the host of misgivings flooding my brain when word came out that Spielberg would be cutting his musical teeth by directing a new screen adaptation of West Side Story. With each new press release cagily sidestepping the dreaded R-word: "remake” in favor of the PR-friendly: “reimaging,”; I could feel the muscles in my neck coiling tighter and tighter. The thought of anyone tinkering with my beloved West Side Story immediately sent me spiraling off into something akin to a film geek's version of bling Elisabeth KĂĽbler-Ross’ “Five Stages of Grief”:

1. Denial – I reminded myself there’d been fruitless talk about remaking West Side Story for decades. Nothing ever came of them, and this time would be no different.
2. Anger – I railed at the Hollywood machine and its remake/franchise addiction. Who the hell asked for a remake of West Side Story? With all the absolutely dreadful musicals in need of remaking, they choose one of the few that got it right? And what about all those great shows that have yet to make it to the screen? Better they should make a film version of Sondheim's Follies or help get Glenn Close that long-deserved Oscar by making of movie of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard.
3. Bargaining – Well, I reasoned…if West Side Story HAS to be remade, at least it’ll be by a talented, seasoned old pro like Steven Spielberg. A man who truly loves the material and knows how to tell a story. I kept reminding myself that it could just as easily have been Rob Marshall (Nine), Susan Strohman (The Producers), Tom Hooper (Cats), or Phyllida Lloyd (Mamma Mia!) at the helm. Yikes!
4. Depression – The first leaked photo of the new cast of WSS was underwhelming, to say the least. 
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But this one left me with just one: "Uh-oh!"
Though I've since had to eat my words, my first thought when I saw this cast photo (with its weird cut-and-paste look that turns everyone into floating Colorforms® figures) was that it reminded me of something I'm always happy to forget: an Abercrombie & Fitch ad. The new Maria looked ideal, but the rest of the cast called forth nightmare visions of Newsies (1992) or worse...Richard Attenborough's A Chorus Line (1985).
5. Acceptance – Every single argument of resistance I'd held regarding the wrong-headed inadvisability of what I'd come to regard as "Spielberg's Folly" crumbled into an irrelevant heap at my feet when I got my first glimpse of West Side Story via the premiere of its teaser trailer during the 93rd Academy Awards telecast on Sunday, April 25, 2021. I wasn't ready. 
Apparently, all the seized-up muscles in my neck needed to get them to relax was for me to hear that tritone "Jets whistle" again. And all that was necessary to uproot my firmly dug-down heels was to see a mere 90 seconds of montage heralding Spielberg's vision. The trailer gave me instant goosebumps AND waterworks, and suddenly the movie I'd scoffed at for well over a year had become the movie I absolutely had to see. 
The Sharks (click image to enlarge)
Once I stopped resisting the idea of a new West Side Story (i.e., focusing on the innumerable, highly probable ways it could be a disaster) my mind began entertaining the tantalizing possibilities a new adaptation posed. For example, I had not considered how thrilling it might be to hear new, full-scale arrangements of all my favorite West Side Story songs. Auguring particularly well for Spielberg's adaptation was the fact that there was to be none of that desperate "Oscar Bait" business of adding a new song to the score...one composed "Especially for the movie!"
The Jets (click image to enlarge)
West Side Story’s groundbreaking use of dance is such a significant part of its legacy and appeal, I couldn’t wait to see what this version had up its sleeve in terms of tackling the one aspect of the show many fans consider to be sacrosanct; Jerome Robbins’ iconic original choreography. Here again, I was encouraged by Spielberg's instincts. Fearful that he was going to select a flavor-of-the-month choreographer from music videos or pop concerts, my heart leapt when I learned that the film's dances would be created by Justin Peck, Tony Award winner and resident choreographer for the New York City Ballet. Now, you're talking!  — ¡Ponle fuego, vamos!     
But standing head and shoulders above everything else (eclipsing even my elation at finding out that James Corden hadn't been cast in any role) was my hope for this new West Side Story to offer, at last, a “cringe-free” viewing experience. My love for the classic 1961 version (and its stars, Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Rita Moreno, George Chakiris, and Russ Tamblyn) has never waned in all this time. But with each passing year—what with contemporary America rolling out the welcome mat to old-school racism, and the advent of HD Blu-ray rendering all those actors in brownface makeup with a clarity as jarring as it is embarrassing—it has grown more difficult for me to minimize and look beyond the wince-inducing whitewash casting and the stereotyped depiction of its Puerto Rican characters. The chance for a more ethnically-authentic West Side Story was exhilarating in its potential.    
Rachel Zegler as Maria Vasquez
Anson Elgor as Anton (Tony) Wyzek
Ariana DeBose as Anita Palacio
David Alvarez as Bernardo Vasquez
Mike Faist as Riff Lorton
Rita Moreno as Valentina

Although I desperately wanted to see West Side Story when it opened at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood on Friday, December 10, 2021, a post-Thanksgiving surge in local COVID cases gave pause to my enthusiasm. Therefore, diligently avoiding reviews and spoilers in the interim (easier than you'd think), I finally got to see West Side Story a rather swift-passing four months later when my partner alerted me of it being streamed online in HD for free to AARP members (ka-ching!) as part of its “Movies for Grown-Ups” series. (I think AARP understood the target demographic for this West Side Story better than Spielberg or 20th Century Fox.) 
Josh Andres Rivera as Chino Martin
character change: now a thicc snack
iris menas as Anybodys
character change: now a transmasculine teen and first-rate ass-kicker  
Jump ahead in time: Me in front of the TV screen, surrounded by junk food, watching the stunning time-lapse end credits (by Drew Geraci) play out over a stirringly lush medley of Leonard Bernstein's beautiful music. The red-eyed, runny-nosed, blubbering mess I’d been reduced to at the end of 2 ½ hours only confirming what I’d already known after five minutes...as far as this lifelong fan of West Side Story was concerned, Steven Spielberg’s masterwork adaptation had caught the moon. One-handed catch. I loved it.
Brian d'Arcy James as Sergeant Krupke / Corey Stoll as Lieutenant Schrank
Hats off to any film that can--at my age--reignite that childlike awe I've always held for the way movies can create entire worlds of the believably impossible within a tiny, rectangular frame. Watching West Side Story turned out to be one of the most enlivening movie-watching experiences I’ve had in too long a while. Not to put too much on the shoulders of Spielberg & Co., but who knew that a good, old-fashioned movie musical…magnificently realized…was just the joyous, hopeful glimpse of light I needed to reaffirm my sense of life beginning to emerge from under the dark cloak of Hellscape: America post-2016?
I like Spielberg's decision not to subtitle the Spanish dialogue.
The screenplay is available online, and one of the many sharp conversations I translated is
Anita's challenge to Bernardo that he hasn't married her because she's Black
I’ve read pieces characterizing the changes to West Side Story by Tony Kushner (who wrote the screenplays for Spielberg’s Munich-2005, Lincoln-2012, and The Fabelmans-2022) as additions. To me, the work of the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer feel more like extractions. He extracts the era-defined racial myopia of both the stage and movie adaptations to make the material resonate as truer, not newer.


The pleasure of Spielberg's West Side Story is that I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to see a movie musical that actually feels like a genuine movie. By that, I mean a movie musical that isn't ironic, apologetic, a pastiche, a cartoon, a music video on steroids, or one of those depressingly sterile Glee/High School Musical things that mistake garish hyperactivity for the stuff of dreams. West Side Story, with its unabashed romanticism and playful surrender to the conventions of the genre, feels like an old-fashioned movie musical in the very best sense of the word. Evidence, perhaps, that a…ahem, mature, traditionalist director like Spielberg was just the person for the job.
My favorite thing about the glorious cinematography by Oscar-winner and longtime Spielberg collaborator Janusz Kaminski (Schindler’s List-1993, Saving Private Ryan- 1998, A.I.-2001, Lincoln-2012) is the use of backlight flare and reflective bursts of light and color to create the glamour of dreamy romance or the flashpoint tension of violence. 
 
As much as I respect his talent and have enjoyed several of his movies (Jaws, The Color Purple), Steven Spielberg has never been one of my favorite directors (I compiled a list once, and he doesn’t even make the top 30). Part of this is due to how often he works in genres that never much interested me (action, adventure, war movies, historical dramas). But I also find in his films and directing style a tendency to lapse into mawkish sentimentality or boyish whimsy that in many instances feels misplaced, or contributes to undermining moments of genuine emotion.

But personal tastes aside, I don’t think anyone who knows anything about filmmaking would argue that Spielberg is not a gifted visual storyteller, skilled craftsman, and well-versed in the vocabulary of cinema. The marvelous thing revealed in seeing Spielberg apply his particular brand of “Great Entertainer” genius to a musical, is that the dominant traits of the genre: exuberance, nostalgia, romanticism, dreamy fantasy, broad strokes characterizations, oversized emotions, amplified sentiment…play specifically to Spielberg’s strengths, flatter his flaws, and turn even his most irksome vices into virtues.
Ilda Mason as Luz  / Ana Isabelle as Rosalia

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
What ultimately cooled my “How dare they tamper with a classic!” indignation over West Side Story was the degree to which every square inch of every frame stood testament to Spielberg's evident care and affection for the material. His palpable desire to do right by the story, music, and dances gives the film an irresistible exuberance that imbues the now 65-year-old musical with an urgency and freshness I honestly hadn't thought possible. Even as I think about it now, I'm so impressed by the way Spielberg’s West Side Story manages to be respectfully faithful to the theatrical production, honor the film version, yet still leave its mark as a boldly distinctive and personal adaptation.


THE STUFF OF FANTASY 
For a movie musical to really get to me, there's usually a sequence or image that captures my imagination and etches itself in my mind as emblematic of the moment my heart was lost. Like a dream portal…it’s not anything I consciously select, but rather, some kind of internal Polaroid snapshot taken during that elusive and spontaneous “goosebump moment.”  In Ken Russell's The Boy Friend, it was when two dancers became Art Deco figurines on a giant gramophone. In Cabaret it was Liza Minnelli draped like a Dali painting over the back of a chair singing "Mein Herr." And in Jesus Christ Superstar it was when Judas emerges from the catacombs of an ancient arena in a Vegas-fringed bodysuit, flanked by a trio of angels with glowing white afros. 
My West Side Story goosebump moment, which has already taken root in my mind as the apex instant of the entire film, is that phenomenal low-angle tracking shot of Anita and a squad of women racing down the middle of the street...full throttle in heels, capris, and twirly skirts a-flipping…in the “America” number. John Ford would understand why this shot is so effective ("When the horizon is at the top, it's interesting. When it's at the bottom, it's interesting. When it's in the middle it's boring as shit!"), but add the combination of music, movement, and jubilant playfulness of the dancers, and you've got a scene that made me gasp as my heart hit the ceiling. 

I love that Rita Moreno, 1961 West Side Story's Oscar-winning Anita, is a co-producer on this film and appears in a substantial supporting role created for the film. She's wonderful as you'd expect, and if she didn't get nominated for an Oscar again (she didn't) it wasn't for lack of trying. Her rendition of "Somewhere" is a heartbreaker, and Spielberg practically crafts her role as a series of ready-made Oscar preview clips. All the odds seemed in her favor, but perhaps Natalie Wood was looking down and exacted a little Awards Season karma.


PERFORMANCES
The Golden Age movie musicals I watched on TV as a kid (original vehicles designed to showcase the talents of a particular star) conditioned me not to expect too much in the way of acting from musicals. In my teens, when the economic demands of adapting Broadway hits for the screen necessitated the casting of bankable names, films like Camelot, Paint Your Wagon, and Man of La Mancha all seemed to come with mutually-exclusive ultimatums: “Do you want movie stars who can actually act, or do you want song & dance talent with the screen charisma of Spam? Take your pick, ‘cause you can't have both.” 
Everyone shines in West Side Story (hands down the best-acted WSS I've ever seen), but Ariana DeBose (Oscar winner), Mike Faist, & David Alvarez are particularly effective in their roles.   
So, I’ve nothing but admiration for Spielberg using his industry clout (the most financially successful director of all time) and fame (he, in essence, is the film’s bankable star)’s the film’s sole bankable name) to make West Side Story the right way: with an extraordinary ensemble cast of young Broadway-trained. (And hallelujah! No one from the world of pop music!)

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Understandably, many will still find West Side Story inherently problematic no matter how many issues are addressed, but personally, I'm overjoyed that Steven Spielberg made a West Side Story I can embrace fully, rather than love at arm's-length. And now, a few parting shots in appreciative recognition of Steven Spielberg, the visual storyteller.
Prologue / Jet Song
Something's Coming
The Dance at the Gym
Maria
Balcony Scene (Tonight)
America
Gee, Officer Krupke
One Hand, One Heart
Cool
Tonight Quintet
I Feel Pretty

As best I could, I’ve tried to keep comparisons between the two West Side Story films to a minimum. The reason why can be found in Stephen Sondheim’s 2010 memoir Finishing the Hat. In it, he relates an anecdote about nervously inviting Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman to see his 1973 Broadway musical A Little Night Music, which Sondheim & Hugh Wheeler had adapted from Bergman’s 1955 film Smiles of a Summer Night
At the end of the show, Sondheim was quick to apologize to the filmmaker for the liberties taken, whereupon Bergman calmed his fears with a perceptive observation: “No, no, Mr. Sondheim, I enjoyed the evening very much. Your piece has nothing to do with my movie, it merely has the same story.” 

That's how I feel about West Side Story 1961 and 2021. The world can accommodate both magnificent musicals. One doesn't have to replace or cancel out the other. And as I have fallen in love with each, there's no need for me to have to choose between them. They're both superb, entirely different movies. They merely share the same story.


BONUS MATERIAL
Not His First Time at the Rodeo
West Side Story may be Steven Spielberg's first full-scale musical, but clearly, the genre has always fascinated him. Musical sequences appear in several of his films (1941, The Color Purple). 1991's Hook was actually conceived and partially shot as a musical (songs by John Williams & Leslie Bricusse). And sometime in the early '80s a musical titled Reel to Reel was planned but scrapped.
Controversially, Spielberg's Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom (1984) credits sequence is an elaborate production number of Cole Porter's "Anything Goes" choreographed by Danny Daniels (Pennies from Heaven - 1981).
Kate Capshaw sings to her future husband while modeling what appear
to be sequined gardening gloves in Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom  


Steven with his father Arnold Spielberg - June 1999

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