johnnesche

The Cohen Brothers and one of their best casts had all the makings of a definitive satirical look at "Golden Age" Hollywood but no one had the guts to tell them that the disastrous right wing Red Scare years that destroyed so many lives was still not funny, probably never would be, and treating the HUAC charges as if they were grounded in reality only made it worse. There's wonderful, funny, surprisingly accurate stuff here, but the title sub-plot is an insult to some of Hollywood's legitimate greats, not satire and sunk the original release as thoroughily as the Brothers did the ransom money in the mistaken belief it would "take the curse off" the big lie in the subplot. 🙄 Channing Tatum's tantalizingly gay dance for a film about sailors about to ship out is a hilarious highlight and the charming "singing cowboy" makes you wonder why the lad has not had a more major career. His performance and story were all the film should have been.

On paper this must have sounded like a wonderful idea! An animated tab version of Gilbert & Sullivan's best known work, THE MIKADO, cut down for a youth audience and starring Australia's clown princess, Anna Russell, who had already (in 1954) sung the Witch in a claymation version of Humperdinck's HANSEL AND GRETEL, as the Mikado's daughter-in-law intended, Katusha. How well I remember the first records I ever owned were plastic on cardboard picture discs of songs from THE MIKADO and H. M. S. PINAFORE! What could possibly go wrong? Well, start by turning the project over to Australia's version of Rankin and Bass, America's premiere poverty row animators who's supreme achievements were the Mr. Magoo cartoons, and allow them to shuffle the characters and "update" W. S. Gilbert's best known comedy lyrics with no sense of period or humor. Then reorchestrate the whole thing to sound like a bad John Denver special (not that there's *anything* wrong with a John Denver special(!), but his musical period and musical phrasing sound nothing like Sir Arthur Sullivan's!). What you are left with is essentially THE GENTLEMEN OF TITIPU; an attempt to retell the classic tale from the point of view, apparently, of the Mikado, with almost none of the original wit or musical sense. "Mia sama, mia sama..." indeed! ...and what a pity. This might have been a rare delight.

On Broadway (seldom welcoming to kid-centric musicals even when they have quality like a HENRY SWEET HENRY, a TUCK EVERLASTING or a BE MORE CHILL - the one possible exception, ANNIE, is really not about the kids but the adults taking care of them), 13 felt like it was written and directed by 13 year olds and bombed out almost immediately. There *were* adults involved however, and the composer had a certain following. In the 12 years since the show tanked it even proved somewhat popular in local high-school productions so Netflix, the largest streaming service and always hungry for new product, took a chance and sprung for a full fledged movie version of the stage mistake. This version is more obviously professional but still aimed clearly at the teenagers it attempts to portray on the verge of young adulthood. It is admirably diverse (within a limited "middle American" range, which is to say mostly white Christian and Jewish - preparation for a Bar Mitzvah plays a central role) and the child actors turn in appealing, professional performances of the songs (which pretty much all sound alike in a bland pop-rock mode) and book scenes, but the few moments which were memorable on stage (cross-couple flirting at the movies) don't really work in a realistic film - at least under this fairly standard direction. This 13 The Movie isn't hard to sit through, but for an adult it's simply passing dull. The target audience may enjoy the energetic dances and if they don't have a particularly broad frame if reference may identify with the kids struggling with problems of parental divorce and having to move away from established friends and support systems (certainly broadbased experiences in the 2020's), but there is little original or surprising. Not great, not disastrous, just a "5" out of "10."