Yesterday I went to see Nine at my favorite theater in Chicago, the Davis. The place is kind of a dump, but I mean that in the kindest way. It’s clean and it offers first-run movies at a good price. It’s just kind of rundown, some of the screens are oddly small and high, and there is what I want to believe is authentic 1970s KISS graffiti in two stalls of the women’s room, which is otherwise straight out of WWII. It is probably not suitable for snobs who are concerned about Dolby sound and such things, but to those of us who know what really matters (such as the fact that its kiddie pack contains the perfect salt/sweet/soda ratio for just $3.75), the Davis is glorious. I hope they never change the cheesy pre-film footage welcoming patrons to the theater, which seems to have been made a decade ago. My favorite part is the reminder to shut off your cell phone, represented by a cartoon phone that looks absolutely gigantic and has an antenna.
As much as I love DVDs and being able to watch movies online, nothing beats going to the movies. It’s just a shame that so many people don’t obey basic movie-going etiquette. Unfortunately, I had an older couple behind me who were talkers. They made asinine observations, such as, when Kate Hudson was onscreen, “That’s Goldie Hawn’s daughter.” I almost lost it when, a good thirty minutes into the picture, during Nicole Kidman’s third or fourth appearance, one of them exclaimed, “I didn’t know she was in this!” There were a couple of talkers in the back, too, and the woman in front of me gave them the crane-necked stink-eye a couple of times. Oddly enough, she followed up one of her crane-necked stink-eyes by getting out her cell phone to look at the time – the old pot vs. kettle, I suppose.
As for Nine… well, let’s just say the title doesn’t reflect the rating I’d give it. I really like Roger Ebert and I have to say that his review, which I read after seeing the film, hits the nail on the head when he says, “Nine is just plain adrift in its own lack of necessity.” Every good idea in it is lifted straight from Fellini, so essentially it’s a musical remake of 8 1/2 rather than a comment or meditation on it. Although I liked some of the performances (Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, and Judi Dench), everyone was just mimicking the characterizations in the original film. It was just a plain weird idea.
Another thing struck me about it that I’ve been giving some thought to lately: the casting of “movie stars” rather than musical theater performers. A few weeks ago, I was thinking about the musical Chicago for some reason and ended up watching some clips online. I watched Ann Reinking and Bebe Neuwith in the 1990s revival and Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera from the original cast, who were all fantastic. I enjoyed the film version when it came out but hadn’t seen it since then, so I looked up a few clips. Watching the stage performers and the movie actors in succession made me realize just how mediocre the film is. Zeta-Jones, Zellweger et al. did just fine, but why is it alright to star in a major motion picture musical and be just fine – not to mention that the choreography is watered down to an amateur level and a lot of the shots are arranged specifically to hide deficiencies in the dancing. Shouldn’t we expect more?
It was the same with Nine, where the performers did a decent job, but nothing more (although even if they’d really delivered, they were working with material vastly inferior to Chicago). Fergie’s number made me think of Liza Minnelli’s scene doing “Mein Herr” in Cabaret, but only because the dance involved chairs. The thing is, the dancers didn’t actually do much with the chairs; I think they were there as a visual cue to bring to mind Bob Fosse’s choreography and the cinematography and Liza’s performance without actually striving to reach the quality of it.
Although there is a rich history of truly brilliant singers and dancers on film, I know that many a time Hollywood has cast non-musical performers in musicals (Audrey Hepburn and Natalie Wood were even dubbed). And so it continues: The celebrities are cast while there are thousands of talented singers and dancers striving for a break. I understand the reasoning behind it, and in some cases I appreciate the virtues of the “names” (I mean, even if he can’t particularly sing or dance, Daniel Day-Lewis is unimpeachable as an actor). It still depresses me a bit, though. And as for Kate Hudson, why is she even a “name” at this point? She was charming in Almost Famous but that was a decade ago and she has done absolutely nothing of quality since. She is Goldie Hawn’s daughter, though!
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