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Favorite Movie Musicals Review
Overall 5.00 of 5
(by 1 user)
Mamma Mia! Up There With the Best of 'Em
Movie Reviewer, a storyteller, A Big Giant Sap, a believer of fate, mother of 2
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JUL
22
2008
1. Grease I don't know if there will ever come a movie musical that will top this one on my list. It has just appeared at too many different points in my life that really mattered. I saw the movie and fell in love with it like most other junior high girls. We all wanted to be Sandy. The music took us back to the time when our parents were our age. I then saw a Florida dinner theater put on the play a few years later while I was on vacation and dreamed of someday being able to do something fun like that. Seven years later I did it. I didn't have the talent to be a Sandy or even a Rizzo, but even as a chorus member, I was still fulfilling that dream. Fourteen years later my niece played the role of Marty to perfection in a high school production. No matter who plays the roles, it's still a great story and great music.
2. Fame This came out while I was in high school, and it showed us there were places where we'd all be accepted. Mainstream America might not have a place for us, but there was a place somewhere where we'd fit just right. It opened up new thought processes on music as well. People could just pour their hearts out and come out with a great song, such as Out Here On My Own, or they could just throw their musicality out there collectively and come up with Hot Lunch Jam. The people in this film weren't even particularly "pretty," but they were real, and that made it even more real to watch. Shortly after the movie came out, a TV series based on the film became a hit as well, and I watched it every Thursday, hopefully getting the weekly house cleaning done first so I could truly enjoy it.
3. The Wizard of Oz This seemed to always be airing on Thanksgiving, and I'd watch it every time the holiday rolled around with the rest of my cousins. We weren't watching football; we were watching this. This was the holiday. The moral here is that dreams and fantasies are great, but it's never the same as what he have at home. The Wizard of Oz also featured the second most scary monster to me growing up, those darned flying monkeys. I can watch the movie now as an adult, but I still can't manage to look at the monkeys. It also features perhaps one of the best songs ever from a movie musical in Over the Rainbow. It's probably one of the most overdone songs out there, but the ukulele version is simply fantastic.
4. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang This is probably my earliest memory of seeing a movie in a theater. There were assumably others, but it's this one starring Dick Van Dyke that I remember. It's also my first soundtrack. I would sit in my bedroom playing it over and over, dreaming of a beautiful woman that would sweep down and save us all, like Truly Scrumptious, and dreamed of someday being a girl on a music box. And it had the only scary monster to me that was worse than those flying monkeys. I had nightmares of the Child-catcher. It was just inconceivable to me that he could lock kids in cages like that. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang had it all in the story and music, from the fun of Toot Sweets to the warmth of You Too. We even had a guinea pig named after the count, Chu-Chi Face.
5. The Lion King Just as I have my favorite from when I was younger, this is my favorite from when my kids were younger. I'm sure their favorites would be different now, in the age of High School Musical and others, but maybe in thirty years, they'll remember this as fondly as I do. The Lion King was my son's first Disney movie, and he asked me to play it over and over and over. We literally watched it every day. I not only have all the songs memorized, I have the entire script memorized. I must admit, though, I didn't hate watching it every day. I actually really liked it. The great part about this film was that it was so realistic to how lions and other animals really are in the jungle. Not that all monkeys go around acting like witch doctors, but as far as the how the animals acted in a traditional sense.
6. White Christmas Star power alone makes this a holiday favorite, with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, and Rosemary Clooney. An older movie, it wasn't even one I watched until I was an adult, even though its original release was ten years before I was born. The music over the story is the bigger draw here, with the song White Christmas being the actual star of the show, even over Crosby. But the more important song to me is Sisters. The first time I watched this movie was with my sister, and every time we talk about our closeness with each other, we invariably break into a chorus or two of Sisters.
7. Mamma Mia! I hadn't seen the play first, unlike many, but that didn't seem to matter in the long run. Meryl Streep sings surprisingly well in this film, just adding to all her other acting talents. Pierce Brosnan sings not so surprisingly badly, but in some ways it adds to the character of the film, as there's nothing more annoying that watching a musical and everyone breaking out in "spontaneous" song and dance that is utterly perfect and well-timed. I never considered myself a huge ABBA fan, but listening to the music here as it becomes married to this story of a young girl who wants her unknown and unnamed father to walk her down the aisle, I am now considering myself a fan . The whole movie from the story, to the characters, to the humor, to the music, is kitschy and fun, and the music along with the story has a very surprising warmth.
8. The Sound of Music This is another film that I surprisingly never watched while growing up, only becoming a fan as an adult, once again watching it with my sister, who is obviously more of a fan of the classics than I am. The story of the singing Von Trapp family is well-known and here becomes storied. Julie Andrews became legendary in this film as the ex-nun, Maria. The truer tale of the family has come out in recent years that it wasn't really as romantic as this, but I still prefer to think of the story playing out this way. Everyone knows the feeling of freedom Maria feels standing on top of the mountain proclaiming the hills are alive, and I was stunned recently listening to a local radio show with a nun as the guest to hear that nuns actually do sing Dominique.
9. Hairspray I never saw the first rendition of this film, but I have thoroughly enjoyed the 2007 version. This marks the second time John Travolta appears in my top ten, although this time instead of playing a tough greaser, he's playing an overweight shut-in female. He's great in this part, and my favorite song from the film is one that he sings along with star Nikki Blonsky, Welcome to the 60s. The other thing I love about this film is the story of how race relations are handled. They tear down the barriers in this movie by thrusting it in your face, and while it seems outrageous to us now, forty years ago it wouldn't have seemed that way to have a day set apart for "Negro Day."
10. Dreamgirls It's another play, just like Mamma Mia! that I had always wanted to see, but chose to wait until it was so successful it was made into a movie. Jennifer Hudson steals the show away from Beyonce here, even though Beyonce's character steals it always from Hudson's character. Hudson lights up the screen every time she's on it, making you wonder what Simon Cowell was talking about when he'd say she was nothing but a backup singer, not seeing the star potential. As with Hairspray, it's another good film for thrusting those forty year old barriers in our face and reminding us not only of how far we have come, but how far we need to go.
Honorable Mention. Singin' in the Rain I've never even seen this classic in its entirety, but like many of the films on the list, it takes me back to a certain time. We watched some of this movie, off reel to reel yet, as DVD and VHS didn't exist back then, in our College Prep English class because we'd been good. We weren't fooled. We weren't bad, but also not particularly good. This was just the favorite movie of our teacher, Mr. Caldwell, and he was going to use any excuse he could to make it our favorite as well. So to you, Mr. Caldwell, I raise my umbrella.
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