I have never bought a ticket for one movie and then walked into another that is sold out. I would rather wait a few hours to see “The Dark Knight” than give my money to the people who gave us “Mamma Mia!” In my mind, that would make me partially responsible for more lousy movies hitting theaters.
Marshall and the Movies
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Momma Mia is, I have heard, an excellent kid movie. Dark Knight, I have been told, is in an entirely different genre. (Jay and I have been watching Entourage re-runs, so we’re entirely clueless on the movie front…)
Maybe your reluctance stems more from a preference for a particular genre – than from the caliber of a movie.
Translation: Cut yourself some slack!
Your fan,
Hope
I’ll set the record straight: I love musicals…when they’re done right. The genre has reemerged this decade because some very capable and visionary filmmakers like Baz Luhrmann (“Moulin Rouge”), Rob Marshall (“Chicago”), and Bill Condon (“Dreamgirls”) took it to levels that hadn’t been seen in decades. Because of many high-profile failures of movie musicals in the late ’60s and ’70s, the genre all but disappeared. “Mamma Mia” ignores the elements that led to the genre’s resurgence and replaces them with those that characterized the flops of the ’70s. It is corny to a point where it is almost unbearable. The acting is awful. The singing is atrocious, especially Pierce Brosnan. The choreography is awkward and out of place. The director, Phyllidia Lloyd, has no idea how to utilize a chorus, having them pop up in strange positions.
It is not my hatred of the genre that leads me to make the statement, but rather an appreciation of it to a point that I know when it goes horribly wrong. If I had written this in 2006, I would never have said, “I would rather wait a few hours to see ‘Munich’ than pay the people who gave me ‘Dreamgirls.'”