Musicals and Superhero Flicks, Fighting in Harmony

On a frigid night in January I watched a musical on DVD called "Across the Universe." Before watching this musical, I was under the impression that "Across the Universe" was a Beatles documentary because I was barely listening when a friend offered a brief description of the movie. Impaired by ignorance and blind optimism, I couldn't prepare for the cheap sensory damage that was to come.

The first sign that flamboyantly bad entertainment awaited came when I spotted the DVD case lying on the carpet of my friend's house. The cover displayed two young lovers about to kiss, framed inside a heart. It was the type of cover you'd expect to see on a Danielle Steele paperback for sale at the grocery store. I gulped morosely and contemplated escape. I decided to stay because leaving would have meant a long walk home in the bitter cold, and beyond that, people with no tolerance for slight suffering might as well give up now.

And so I watched it, I saw the whole damn thing, and here are my thoughts. Rock and roll loses its charisma when it is adapted into musical form. It's wrong to emasculate a song generated by machismo just as it would be wrong for Henry Rollins to release an album of Bjork covers. (And let's hope Henry never does.) They released almost ten great albums, and the two survivors probably had nothing to do with the the musical other than accepting a PGA-golf-outing-sized check, so I'd be a total Judas bastard to denounce the Beatles. But even so, "Across the Universe" made me resent the Beatles' boundless popularity and accessibility.

My criticism is biased, though, because I don't like any musicals. Every minute of a musical is five minutes in real time. "Grease" is the highest-grossing twelve-hour movie of all time. I could go from clean-shaven to a Unabomber beard in the time it takes to finish "The Sound of Music."

***

Like it so far? 'Cause you haven't read the entire thing. Please order a copy of my book. It's called "There Will be Blog."

www.xlibris.com/NickOlig.html