Movie Misery

I watched a lot of movies over this long weekend, and ended up seeing one of the worst things I have ever seen: The Ten Commandments, The Musical. It was a filmed performance of the Los Angeles musical starring Val Kilmer and was really shocking in just how awful it was. I have nothing against the basic concept, I love Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Jesus Christ Superstar, but the execution left a lot to be desired. To start with, the music sounded like it was written by Kenny G. It was very dull, droning, repetitive, and had very few distinct songs. It was sung through, a la Les Miz (and, like Les Miz, it has its origins in France), but it came across more like The Woman In White, with one long string of recitative and a couple of blah songs thrown in. Then there were the liberties taken with the story, which, to be fair, had to be done to give the story a dramatic thrust, but they didn't succeed. The narrative was way too choppy and episodic with no through story. We barely got to know any of the characters, it was more like a moving diorama than a real story, which brings us to the AWFUL special effects. The plagues took up maybe 2 minutes of the running time and were portrayed as a CGI movie on a large screen backdrop. Totally laughable. Lastly, while Val Kilmer was hardly the worst singer (although was there really a casting session where the producers sat around and said "You know who'd make a kick-ass Moses? Val Kilmer! Is he available?"), it seemed that when auditioning the chorus they specifically chose people who could not sing, and that just did not help the lousy music at all. I knew the show had gotten awful reviews, but I had been hoping it would have been awful in a spectacular, fabulous, highly entertaining way, but instead it was just awful in a very blah, I want those 2 hours of my life back, kind of way.

Last weekend I finally got around to watching The History Boys, and I don't know if my expectations were too high, but I was not very impressed. Granted, in the special feature making-of documentary, Nicholas Hytner said they cut about an hour of material out of the show, but it still felt too long and, like The Ten Commandments, really did not have much focus. At the end it became apparent that the gay kid was the main character, but it took the entire movie to figure that out, and since no one really had that much of a story, it was hard to care about any of them. I thought the camera work was awful, way too static, and while the material was probably electrifying on stage, it had nothing new to say and the limitations of film really brought that to light. It was nothing more than a reverse Dead Poets Society (the current teachers are the good ones and the new one is the bad one), and without the corporal punishment scene to boot. I was very disappointed. There are ways to successfully turn plays into movies and make theme seem totally new, like Proof, Love Valour Compassion, and most significantly, Amadeus, but this one came from the Marat/Sade and Death and the Maiden static, stage-bound school of cinematic adaptation.

Lastly, speaking of movies, I was thrilled that Entertainment Weekly gave Balls of Fury an F (although I'm not so thrilled with their assessment of Xanadu, but more on that in another post). Dan Fogler did not win a fucking Tony award so that he could make movies like that. It's an outrage that Hollywood can't find anything better for theatre stars than crap like that. I can see why Chita decided to stay away (although after the movie adaptation of Sweet Charity, it may not have been solely her decision) and focus on live theatre for her career. Let's hope John Gallagher Jr., Michael Cerveris, and Beth Leavel, all recent wonderful featured performer Tony winners either get better treatment or opt to stay true to their art.