Ryan ChartrandI don’t hate musicals; I actually love them. I only hate that, until recently, I was embarrassed to come out to you about it. Indeed, I own the soundtracks to several now-“uncool” musicals and belt their lyrics in my car, only to surreptitiously pretend to be emphatically singing along to Amy Winehouse or Chris Brown. But I know I’m not fooling anyone (it’s hard to transition from “The Hills Are Alive” to “Wall to Wall”), which is why I am glad the film musical genre is back.
The golden era of the movie musical was in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, and by the time the ’90s rolled around (the decade in which I spent most of my childhood), the talent en vogue was more the Julia Roberts-type than Judy Garland. But after a stale period of romantic comedies and Leonardo DiCaprio dramas, the era of the neo-musical is now. And this time, movie musicals are back with a vengeance.
The neo-musical has come a long way from its Fred Astaire/Gene Kelly roots. With new audiences that would jeer at the prospect of characters bursting into conveniently poignant lyrics and interpretive tap dance sequences, the once-dominant genre had to morph to accommodate modern sensibilities.
One of the first neo-musicals to successfully make the transition is “Moulin Rouge,” which was (unbeknownst to many of its teenage viewers) a compilation of cover songs cleverly incorporated into a highly stylized song-and-dance motion picture. Although it didn’t necessarily gain broad acclaim, it did pave the way for other films that would include original and non-original music sung by the actors as a part of the film.
Perhaps musical film has reemerged because of the kind of talent present in an industry where actors become singers (Lindsay Lohan, David Hasselhoff) and singers become actors (Beyoncé Knowles, Justin Timberlake), or perhaps because screenwriters/directors have come up with a way to make musicals less trite and more relevant for today’s culture. This year’s Oscar for Best Original Song went to Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova for their song “Falling Slowly” from “Once,” a musical more about the music the two main characters create together than about how many cheesy musical numbers can fit into 90 minutes of film.
Still, the hyper-reality present in the musicals we remember fondly, such as “Grease,” “The Sound of Music” and “Chicago,” will persist as films like Julie Taymor’s “Across the Universe” and Tim Burton’s “Sweeney Todd” garner interest from audiences. I suppose that these have never really gone out of style, but the recent production of films like “Phantom of the Opera,” “Hairspray” and the surprising popularity of “High School Musical” has proven to inspire more to come. This July, expect to find “Mamma Mia!” in theaters starring Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth (Mr. Darcy sings?).
Surely, the movie musical never died, but its mainstream popularity did for a time. I still dream of the day I can sing “Seasons of Love” (from “Rent”) and “Defying Gravity” (from “Wicked”) from the rooftops without compromising my cultural integrity, but until then, I’ll happily tolerate their modern offspring.
Allison Baker is an English senior, Mustang Daily columnist and pop-culture enthusiast