Skip to main content

Professor's Picks: 5 More Musicals Ripe For a Remake


    I guess the term "remake" is something of an ill-fit. After all Steven Spielberg's new West Side Story, which inspired this piece, is less a "remake" of the 1961 film than simply another adaptation of the stage musical that the 1961 film is also based on. Semantics.

    This distinction highlights one way in which stage shows are privileged above feature films. Stage performances are restaged and reinvented all the time. The stage version of Les Miserables has been effectively "remade" a million different times over its 37-year run across a billion different venues all over the world. Meanwhile, we've only got a single film adaptation of the Les Mis musical.

    I know it's heresy to say that maybe Hollywood needs more remakes (I'm one of the rare people who doesn't on principle hate Disney Remakes), but it shouldn't be to say the world needs more musicals. And if Spielberg's new take on the show is a box office win, there's a very real possibility that we'll see Hollywood going back to the bank of established Broadway hits for inspiration. Just earlier this year, Paramount announced plans for such a remake of The King and I. Should this ball gain some momentum, Hollywood would be in no short supply for shows to restage, and I am in no short supply for ideas of where they should start.


1. Oliver!


We owe songs like "Where is Love," "As Long as He Needs Me," and "Who Will Buy" to the 1960 musical by Lional Bart, itself an adaptation of Oliver Twist, the novel by Charles Dickens. The 1968 film adaptation was famously the last musical best picture winner before Chicago in 2002. The story follows orphan Oliver as he searches for home in the desolate streets of 1830 England.

    A part of me is actually kind of surprised that we haven't seen a remake of this already. After Tom Hooper's experiment with Les Miserables, I'd have thought that this would be a natural next step. Like Les Miserables, Oliver! touches on issues of poverty and suffering. The show lends itself to hyper-realistic crafting that isn't a natural fit for most musical movies and offers a chance to further probe the intersection between our capacity for raw emotion and the genre's capacity for elevated storytelling.


2. South Pacific (1958)

Based on the 1949 Broadway show by Rodgers and Hammerstein, the 1958 film features songs like "Some Enchanted Evening," "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught," and "Bali Ha'i." The story follows the romantic pursuits of workers at an American military post stationed in the Pacific Islands during World War II. I'm pushing for a modern remake of this title because two things really date the 1958 film.

First, the technicolor overdose. Does this section's lead image look a little too ... yellow to you? The entire film isn't rendered in such intense color, but frequently throughout the film, usually in tandem with some high-volume emotion, the screen will suddenly be flooded with blue or purple. The attempt to add some extra emotion to the scene almost always comes off as distracting and desperate. I get the impulse to get the most out of a high-volume romantic moment using some grand display of filmmaking, but the flashing color just betrays a lack of confidence in not just the story, performers, and music, but also the lush beach backdrop that naturally lends itself to the illustriousness of musical storytelling. More than anything, it's this paradisical setting that really makes the case for another film adaptation. I really just want to see people singing on the beach.

Second, the complicated racial politics of the film. Point in this movie's favor: this is one of the first films to feature characters confronting their own internalized racism. One of the story's tensions comes from Nellie, our leading lady, realizing she has trouble accepting that her suitor has mixed-race children from his first wife. This is also one of the few films of the era to prominently feature actors of color, and the native islanders are themselves depicted as a benevolent community, but it's in these depictions that the film trips over itself a little. 

Despite the best intentions of the writers, the Polynesian community comes off a little othered. They're portrayed as friendly, yes, but with very little depth. They almost play like they are just here as decoration, entertainment for the white characters. This is particularly noticeable with the film's most central native character, Bloody Mary. "You is saxy," she tells the handsome American Lt. Cable upon first meeting him.

South Pacific is emblematic of racial conversations during the mid-20th century. The text itself is explicitly anti-racist, but through its ignorance it still perpetuates demeaning racial stereotypes. A more mature perspective would go a long way.


3. Guys and Dolls

    The 1955 film was based on the 1950 stage show with music by Frank Loesser. The adaptation includes numbers like "Luck Be a Lady" and "Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat" directly from the Broadway show while also adding several new numbers like "The Eyes of a Woman in Love." 

        A "remake" of this film has actually been in discussion at TriStar since the early 2010s, but it's been a few years since we've heard any new word on the production, and I really hope it comes through one way or another. The musical takes on a classic beauty and the beast love story in which a gambler takes on a bet that he can't take a lovely missionary on a romantic excursion to Havanna. In order to woo said missionary, he has to pretend to be an honest man. But, go figure, he comes to realize that maybe he actually has the capacity for genuine sincerity. 

    An underground gambler isn't exactly the most likely candidate to burst out into song in real life, but it's that discrepancy that makes it all the more exciting when you see something like a fully choreographed crap game. It's also this dichotomy of worldviews (cynicism vs altruism) that especially endears me to the film and makes me want to see it brought to life in the modern scene.  

        I don't know how this film would top Marlon Brando salsa dancing, but what have we got to lose?



4. How to Suceed in Business Without Really Trying

You might remember this musical as Daniel Radcliffe's little project while he was between Harry Potter films. I myself was introduced to the stage show when my high school performed this for their annual musical, and I've had fondness for the title ever since.

The 1967 film was adapted from the 1961 stage musical by Frank Loesser and book by Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock, and Willie Gilbert, based on Shepherd Mead's 1952 book of the same name. It includes songs like "Coffee Break," "Rosemary," "Been a Long Day," and "Brotherhood of Men." 

The musical follows a window cleaner who trips into success with the help of a book. This mostly just consists of him playing into the arrogance of his colleagues and coworkers, like pretending to be from the same university as his boss. The recurring punchline is that any fool can climb the pyramid of success if he just knows the right things to say. Success is less a meritocracy than a game that someone wins if they know how to bend the rules in their favor.

While music is the window into very high-volume and profound emotions, it can also work really well as farce or social commentary. "How to Succeed" leans into this curve while not coming off quite as cynical as a musical like "Chicago." And musicals lampooning the absurdity of corporate culture are always in season.


5. The Phantom of the Opera (2004)

Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical mega-hit famously follows a naive young soprano, Christine Daae, performing in a Paris while under the tutelage of the geniusly gifted yet dangerously mysterious Phantom who haunts the opera house. In addition to the show's iconic title number, the musical gifted us songs such as "Music of the Night," "All I Ask of You," and "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again."

The 2004 film adaptation has accrued mixed reactions, especially from the musical community, but I'll say up and front that I am not a hater of this film. It was one of my first exposures to live-action musicals and a sort of backdoor to the world of Broadway, and for that I could never hate it. I'm not in the camp that thinks the 2004 film is some blight upon the musical genre, but I am in the camp that thinks there is still a better Phantom of the Opera movie to be made. 

Broadway-caliber performers are generally the preference in musical storytelling, but the vocal limitations of Emmy Rossum and Gerard Butler are especially glaring given the characters they are playing. These aren't just any characters. They are angels of music. (Interesting note: the lead roles were originally offered to Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman, but both had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts. One of the great what-ifs of history.)

Mostly, I just think that the film is emblematic of the identity crisis that movie musicals went through in the early 21st century. The 2004 movie feels caught between the opulence of its source material and the timidity Hollywood felt around musicals around this time. It's this awkward tension that gives us things like characters speaking lines that were clearly meant to be sung or the Phantom's Underworld lair looking like a flooded garage. Just give us the Baz Lurhman-esque musical mardi gras we all deserve. 

---

In promotion for the upcoming West Side Story, actor Brian d'Arcy James recently gave this perspective:

“... I’ve spent a lot of time in the theater, where revivals are a main thread of what we do, particularly musicals. Any chance to reimagine or inject new life into something people already know is a little less sacrosanct in the theater. So that kind of thinking spills into this scenario. Then when you add in the idea that it’s Steven Spielberg and [writer] Tony Kushner, then you really don’t have to think twice.”

    The great thing about music is that the same song can sound good sung by a wide variety of voices. Different performers and directors know how to elicit different colors and sensations from the same songbook, and it's a shame we don't see Hollywood try its hand at musical revivals more often. It's not a slight against any of these musicals, or the films they inspired, to suggest that these soundtracks would benefit from another round. The world always needs more music.

            --The Professor


Honorable Mentions: Hello Dolly!, Annie Get Your Gun, Porgy and Bess, Camelot

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

REVIEW: The Wild Robot

     I think I must have known that Chris Sanders had another movie on deck, but I guess I had forgotten it was coming out so soon. For whatever reason, when I saw his name at the end of the credits for The Wild Robot , out this weekend, I was caught off guard ... and then realized that it actually explained a lot. The basic premise felt broadly reminiscent of Lilo & Stitch , and there was at least one sequence that definitely recalled How to Train Your Dragon , both of which Sanders co-directed with Dean Deblois (executive producer on this film). With his latest offering for Dreamworks, Sanders cements his position as a titan in the world of animation.     The movie sees ROZ, a shipwrecked robot stranded on an island completely untouched by humans. One would think that such an Eden would be bereft of the squabbles that humans seem so happy to create, but the animals of the island revile this new intruder and put up every fence they have. The only thing on this rock that doesn'

REVIEW: Scream

     Stop me if you've heard this before about slasher films, in or out of the Scream franchise:       "Don't overthink it. It's just a scary movie."       What an insulting thought for anyone who's ever found themselves in the throes of a gripping horror film. Good slasher films, like the original Scream , look honestly at the thing that scares us most and gives it a face. They know that the point of the slasher isn't in the chasing or the stabbing, but the unmasking. The overcoming of the thing that scares you. Good slasher films "overthink" it.     I'm grateful to report that the directors of the newest Scream film,  Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, not only understand this principle, they embrace it wholly. In doing so, they may have created a sequel that not only meets but surpasses the film it tries to emulate.     Twenty-five years after Sidney Prescott's first encounter with Ghostface, we meet Sam Carpenter, a native of

Children of a Lesser God: Between Sound and Silence

Loyal readers may remember last month when I talked about Sidney Poitier and Elizabeth Hartman in A Patch of Blue and how I casually alluded to the larger framework of disability within film and promised to talk about it one day. Well, this isn’t like with my Disney Princess series where I teased the project for years before finally getting to it. I’m making good on that promise here today. You’re welcome.  Now, when I say “disability within film,” that’s a really large slice of the pie. The discussion of disability in Hollywood is a vast and complex field of study. There’s obviously overlap across the broader discussion, but people of different disabilities experience ableism differently, similar to how members of different ethnic identities experience racism differently, and it’s a machine that has to be dismantled on multiple fronts.  But with this piece, I’m not so interested in airing all the ways the industry has let down members of these communities. Today, I’d mostly li

Are We in Another Golden Age of Musicals?

  In early 2017, Variety ran a piece titled “ Will Musicals See a ‘La La Land’ Boost ?” alongside said movie’s victory lap around the box office and critics at large. Justin Paul, who wrote the music for La La Land alongside his partner, Benj Pasek, was optimistic about the doors his movie was opening: “I have to believe that other studios, other producers, would only be encouraged by the impact of ‘La La Land,’ both critically and at the box office.” Their agent, Richard Kraft, shared a similar sentiment. “I think people are growing tired of snark and skepticism and pessimism. [La La Land] hit the zeitgeist for smart and unapologetic optimism. Even in times of strife and conflict, people still fall in love and follow dreams.”  These are the kinds of statements that don’t go unnoticed by a musical nerd who chose to write his semesterly report on Meet Me in St. Louis when all his fellow film students wrote on Woody Allen. Classical musicals had always just been that gateway into c

American Beauty is Bad for your Soul

  The 1990s was a relatively stable period of time in American history. We weren’t scared of the communists or the nuclear bomb, and social unrest for the most part took the decade off. The white-picket fence ideal was as accessible as it had ever been for most Americans. Domesticity was commonplace, mundane even, and we had time to think about things like the superficiality of modern living. It's in an environment like this that a movie like Sam Mendes' 1999 film American Beauty can not only be made but also find overwhelming success. In 1999 this film was praised for its bold and honest insight into American suburban life. The Detroit News Film Critic called this film “a rare and felicitous movie that brings together a writer, director and company perfectly matched in intelligence and sense of purpose” and Variety hailed it as “a real American original.” The film premiered to only a select number of screens, but upon its smashing success was upgraded to

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Do Clementine and Joel Stay Together or Not?

                    Maybe. The answer is maybe.             Not wanting to be that guy who teases a definitive answer to a difficult question and forces you to read a ten-page essay only to cop-out with a non-committal excuse of an answer, I’m telling you up and front the answer is maybe. Though nations have long warred over this matter of great importance, the film itself does not answer once and for all whether or not Joel Barrish and Clementine Krychinzki find lasting happiness together at conclusion of the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Min d. I cannot give a definitive answer as to whether Joel and Clementine’s love will last until the stars turn cold or just through the weekend. This essay cannot do that.             What this essay can do is explore the in-text evidence the film gives for either side to help you, the reader, understand the mechanics, merits, and blindspots of either interpretation of the ending. It can also reveal the underlying assumptions of either

REVIEW: A Quiet Place - DAY ONE

I remember back when I reviewed A Quiet Place Part II , the thing that was on my mind a world crawling out of a global pandemic.  I now dive into Michael Sarnoski's newest take on the mythology with A Quiet Place: Day One having just this morning heard the news that a certain convicted felon is being granted immunity for his involvement in trying to overthrow democracy, and I am left wondering (not for the first time) what surviving in a world that already balances on borrowed time even means. This is more or less the mindset of the film's protagonist, Sam, a terminally ill cancer patient who was already done with existing well before killer aliens started dropping out from the sky. The only things she cares about in the world are her "emotional support" cat, Frodo, and getting a taste of some proper New York pizza before this cancer takes her, alien invasion or not! While the rest of the city is running off to catch the last boat off Manhattan, she just digs deeper

REVIEW: Cyrano

    The modern push for the movie musical tends to favor a modern sound--songs with undertones of rap or rock. It must have taken director Joe Wright a special kind of tenacity, then, to throw his heart and soul into a musical project (itself a bold undertaking) that surrenders to pure classicalism with his new film Cyrano . Whatever his thought process, it's hard to argue with the results. With its heavenly design, vulnerable performances, and gorgeous musical numbers, the last musical offering of 2021 (or perhaps the first of 2022) is endlessly enchanting.     Cyrano de Bergerac's small stature makes him easy prey for the scorn and ridicule of the high-class Victorian society, but there has yet to be a foe that he could not disarm with his sharp mind and even sharper tongue. The person who could ever truly reject him is Roxanne, his childhood friend for whom he harbors love of the most romantic variety. Too afraid to court Roxanne himself, he chooses to use the handsome but t

Part of That World: Understanding Racebent Ariel

          I’ve said before that the public discourse around the current parade of live-action Disney remakes has been very contentious. Trying to have a civil conversation about the potential creative merits is something of an uphill battle. In most cases, this is just the general opposition to Hollywood’s penchant for repackaged material, but the mess does spill into other conversations.              Take the casting announcement of Halle Bailey in the role of the upcoming remake of The Little Mermaid . When Disney announced on July 3, 2019 that the highly coveted role of Ariel would go to an African-American actress, you saw a lot of excitement from crowds championing fair representation. You also saw a lot of outrage, most clear in the trending hashtag #NotMyAriel.              I hear a lot of people shouting that “Ariel has been white for two-hundred years. Why change that all the sudden?” But the fact is she hasn’t even “been Ariel” for that long. “Ariel” is the name the merma

Silver Linings Playbook: What are Happy Endings For Anyway?

            Legendary film critic Roger Ebert gave the following words in July of 2005 at the dedication of his plaque outside the Chicago Theatre: Nights of Cabiria (1957) “For me, movies are like a machine that generates empathy. If it’s a great movie, it lets you understand a little bit more about what it’s like to be a different gender, a different race, a different age, a different economic class, a different nationality, a different profession, different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us. And that, to me, is the most noble thing that good movies can do and it’s a reason to encourage them and to support them and to go to them.” Ebert had been reviewing films for coming on forty years when he gave that assessment. I haven’t been doing it for a tenth as long. I don’t know if I’ve really earned the right to ponder out loud what the purpose of a good film is. But film critics new and old don’t need much