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In style, if not substance, The Greatest Showman is reminiscent of the Disney film, Newsies. Like the 1992 live-action musical, The Greatest Showman comes to life when the characters are singing or dancing but struggles through the sequences i...

Hairspray follows in the footsteps of Little Shop of Horrors and The Producers as campy movies that became even more campy stage musicals before returning to the screen in lavish song-and-dance productions. (Spamalot may be the next title to follo...

From its early days at the Off-Broadway Public Theater in February 2015 through its highly-anticipated opening on August 6 at the Richard Rogers Theater, it was apparent that Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton was going to be the big live theater...

It doesn't seem all that long ago when musicals were one of Hollywood's most popular genres. Each year, studios would commit millions of dollars into lavish productions featuring some of the era's song-and-dance icons: Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra...

I Wanna Dance with Somebody (full title: Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody) is as generic a musical bio-pic as one is likely to find. A by-the-numbers, slightly fictionalized chronicle of the rise and fall of pop singer Whitney Houston (...

When contemplating a musical, whether it’s a Hollywood classic, an original screen creation, or a stage-to-movie adaptation, there are two key considerations. The first is that the film has a story worth telling and that its raison d’etre ...

Into the Woods left me out in the cold. The long-gestating cinematic adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's fairy tale-infused Broadway musical, Into the Woods can claim a clever screenplay and a few enjoyable performances but little else. The generic ...

Initially, the stage-to-screen transition of the Broadway musical Jersey Boys was expected to be helmed by Jon Favreau. When Favreau withdrew, it opened the door for veteran director Clint Eastwood to take the reins. Eastwood's approach to telling ...

If nothing else, the experience of watching Joker: Folie a Deux argues against its very existence. Sitting in movie theater as this motion picture unspools, one can understand any reluctance director/co-writer Todd Phillips may have had developing...

La La Land, Damien Chazelle’s much-anticipated follow-up to his stunning 2014 feature debut, Whiplash, illustrates the magic that can result when a director is fully committed to a vision. Chazelle doesn’t just want to tell a story (altho...