Musical Mediocrity

A friend of mine wanted to see Into The Woods, so I went and saw it with them today.  It was weird - the story and characters weren't bad but overall the whole thing was... mediocre, uninspired.  It was about an hour too long.  And being a musical, the music sucked... not in a horrible, painful sense but in a "This is boring and I can't remember a single song walking out of the theatre" sense.  Musical theatre has its roots in opera, especially German singspiel opera which has spoken words coupled with arias as opposed to the normal recitative/aria format.  Into The Woods was like watching spoken word combined with recitative with no arias.  What made this baffling was that it was written by Stephen Sondheim, who also did what is possibly my favorite musical of all time, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum.  I guess he lost any talent for melody between the two.  Look, I don't need hooks and melodies to enjoy music, or even musical theatre.  Tristan und Isolde has almost no catchy tunes and its over three hours long but the difference is that Richard Wagner was a musical genius and the music in Tristan is on a whole different level - yes, there are no hummable melodies, but the chords and harmonies are brilliant and the whole... tone of the opera is so emotionally resonant that you are affected inside and you remember *that* after the thing has ended and you look forward to the day when it can do it to you again.

I know I normally don't do reviews on this blog for movies that are currently in theatres (I should, I guess... but I suppose I don't because it's expensive to go to the movies... or maybe it's because I can't add any pretty pictures).  I just wanted to express my disappointment in this movie and in the state of music in film in general (I know I did a while ago with my film score post) and musicals in particular.  The same friend and I saw Frozen last year and that was mediocre too, with only one memorable song (and we all know what it is....).  It makes me wonder what the point of making these things musicals is when the music is so uninspired and unmemorable... why not have it be a straight up play or movie?

I don't go to live shows so I don't know what the absolute latest things playing are (I'm only so interested in musicals, they aren't my favorites) but if Into The Woods is any indication (and checking online I see that it originally played in 1987) I don't really have much hope.  I guess I should be somewhat hopeful... another one of my favorites, Little Shop Of Horrors debuted at about the time (1982) so maybe one day I'll give another musical a chance.

Ooh, that got me thinking... maybe I should go re-watch Little Shop Of Horrors.