Skip to main content

Kiss Me Kate Review

What I liked: This is a classic musical, or at least it comes in the box set labeled classic musicals. I remembered seeing it in middle school as the movie version of taming of the shrew It wasn’t particularly inspiring at the time and we ended up watching it as part of a girls night after everyone else voted down Indiana Jones and Star Wars, so Kiss Me Kate was not likely to get a good response from me. It turns out there is much more to the movie than we watched in middle school. The more than we watched in middle school isn’t really made up parts relevant to the plot, rather it is all of the famous show tunes that you have never placed: It’s too darn hot, Brush up your Shakespeare, True to you in my own fashion, Why can’t you behave, etc. These songs are great, they are catchy, they are famous, they have nothing to do with each other or the plot. So essentially Kiss Me Kate excels at being a musical. It has an absurd plot that is largely disregarded by the actors and audience, it has long dance interludes for no apparent with remarkably talented performers, it has songs that will be sung by show choirs with better vocals and better staging than the original. The film also had some fun plays on Shakespeare in general and Taming of the Shrew in particular like not letting the leading lady eat the whole night because stage fright upsets her stomach a parallel to one of the tactics used in Taming of the Shrew. I also really liked the dumb thug, he was very funny and I thoroughly enjoyed his performance.
What I didn’t: Many of the advantages that make this undeniably a musical are limitations for a normal movie. What was the plot? wait was this actually mostly the plot of Singing in the Rain? How exactly did the plot resolve? Why do the mafia guys dance? How did this acting troop actually make money? Was the script writing process just “hey look we have all these songs that didn’t fit into any of our other musicals, let’s put them all together and pretend they are related”? Also some of the filming was odd, for example the standard way to shoot a tap dance number is to focus on the feet and zoom in when there is particularly fancy footwork. It is not to focus on the person’s face while fancy footwork is happening, leaving us to wonder if the dancer can actually dance. Finally, the musical was written in 1948 and is a retelling of Taming of the Shrew, so as you can guess, the relationships are highly questionable by today’s standards.
Who should watch this: People who love musicals. Not people who love Shakespeare.
Would I watch it again? No but now I know where all those songs come from.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ready Player One Review

What I liked: I bet all of the developers loved making this film, I saw so many video game and movie references in the background of scenes. I bet all the developers just inserted their favorites like the ninja turtles, a whole platoon of halo soldiers, and orcs. That it was a video game made it possible and exciting to have all kinds of absolutely random physics and logic defying things happen. Obviously, I loved the T. Rex and who would not enjoy seeing Mechagodzilla or a cyborg orc driving a monster truck? Early in the movie they made good use of the video game architecture in a way that reminded me a bit of secret rooms in super mario. The characters visit the world of the Shining, which was amazing and hilarious. I loved the variety of characters, vehicles and weapons that we get to see and it is more fun (at least for me) that they draw from more than strictly the 1980's. I also really liked the music, for the most part the selections were great for the scenes. The book was...
3 comments
Read more

Fast and Furious 8 review

What I liked: This is the first Fast and Furious movie I have seen but I have watched a number of the trailers. They always teemed with absurdity. Now instead of a 3 minute trailer, I got to sit through an hour and a half of turbo powered sports cars saving the world. As you can imagine the list of things to like is quite long. The movie starts off strong with a car race in Havanah (I guess that US-Cuban relations are going really well if a FBI agent is having his honeymoon there). The reason for the car race was a bit complicated but essentially the main dude was trying to win back his cousin's car. In the course of the race he manages to light it on fire, explode it, and launch it into the ocean. But at least he won it back. I'm sure his cousin was very grateful. I also find it noteworthy that the race was 1 mile long and took 11 minutes to complete. The moral of this story is that while both racers are excellent at theatrics, they take safety seriously. After blowing up B...
1 comment
Read more

Crazy Rich Asians

What I liked: One of the earliest scenes has a flurry of social media. I liked the way it was filmed and thought it was funny and effective. The best friend is remarkably well prepared for almost any eventuality. If she could fit her closet in a utility belt she would be a fashion batman. Without all the cool gadgets and fighting. Just clothes and accessories. Worst Batman ever. I liked her collection of outfits in her trunk. The whole family making dumplings together was surprisingly cute. Until it reminded me of the recent Pixar dumpling short . You can't unsee it now can you? Really, that short is this movie in about 5 minutes. So if you want to save your self some time... The mom is a very effective villain, I think she and Lady Tremaine would get along well. I liked the proposal scene. Of the whole movie this is the part the seems the most realistic. What I didn't: Ok even if we buy the "I just wanted to be a peasant and my true self with you" non-sense, unde...
Post a Comment
Read more