I don't get movie critics

While the big names are slobbering over "King Kong," they are also all denouncing the hour-shorter "Producers" as "overblown," supposedly because it was filmed like you're sitting in a $100 seat in the third row center, which means you can actually see the choreography. Where are all the MTV quick cuts and close-ups on some dancer's elbow? You call that a musical?

One of the things that killed the musical in movies is trying too hard to film them like busy modern movies with lots of camera set ups, cuts, and close-ups. Bob Fosse could get a way with it in "All That Jazz" because he was Bob Fosse, but the folks that have come up afterwards aren't Bob Fosse. It's the same thing that has made Jackie Chan's big budget American movies lousier than his low budget Hong Kong movies -- the refusal to mount the camera in one place and let the man do his stuff. Fred Astaire, at least, was powerful enough to keep his directors from thinking they were the creative talent on the set.

(I suspect the bigger problem with "The Producers" for film critics are all the gay jokes. Considering how many times I've been denounced for pointing out that gays have a higher propensity to "lissssssp" with a hissy S, I particularly liked the scene where the gay director's "common-law assistant" says "Yesssssssssssssss" and the S's go on for at least 30 seconds. No, movie reviewers like realism, like manly gay cowboys.)

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer