Meet Me In St. Louis (Vincente Minelli, 1944): The main things I remembered about this movie are that Judy Garland looked really pretty in it and the Trolley Song. And that just saying the phrase “Meet me in St. Louis” is enough to get the stupid theme song in my head for days:
It’s such a bizarre movie. These people, they don’t have problems. I guess it was nice for people to watch a happy family during the War. It really made me think about why I loved musicals so hard in high school, and I think the simple version of life they presented was part of it.
Kansas City (Robert Altman, 1996): I liked this way better than I thought I would; I always forget how much I like the sweep of an Altman big cast film, and there’s a lot to love about the 1930s era — the clothes, the music, etc. I loved the relationship between Jennifer Jason Leigh and Miranda Richardson, the woman she kidnaps — you think that they’re going to bond in sisterhood over their crappy husbands, I think even Jennifer Jason Leigh thinks that, but that is not how it works out. I’m not sure if all the stuff in the jazz club totally worked though. Altman got real current jazz musicians to play the (famous) musicians at the jazz club, and had a young Charlie Parker kind of pointlessly hanging around the balcony. I really feel like Altman was mythologizing really hard even while he was de-glamourizing all these other parts of the Depression (including electoral politics, whooo boy).
Hairspray (John Waters, 1988): Man, I love this movie. It’s so good-hearted but still a little gross.
Cry-Baby (John Waters, 1989): This wasn’t as successful for Waters, and it’s not as good a movie, more parody of cheesy teen movies than the kind of jumping off point that they are for Hairspray. But it’s still pretty funny: “Do you know the automoblie racing game known as chicken?” Also, I really like that he has hillbillies and African-Americans hanging out together, despite the Confederate flags everywhere.
Hairspray (Adam Shankman, 2007): Okay, I went into this really expecting it to be this terrible thing that completely erased any of the edge the original had. So understand that my ridiculously low expectations are where I’m coming from when I say: this wasn’t so bad. John Travolta was terrible though, as was the whole expansion of Edna’s character. The rest of it though, was okay: everyone was like 4X more attractive (except Nikki Blonsky) though, which made the whole thing a little bit less honest. Also, I noticed that the story changes and losing the Sonny Bono character and having Velma Von Tussle be the station manager really made it seem like the only racists in Baltimore were women. What was with that? Also, -100 points for making Tracy’s fatness such a focal point of the story. It matters in the original, but it’s so much more of an obstacle for her in this, both in terms of it taking longer for her to cast on the show, longer for her and Link to hook up, and she doesn’t even win the stupid contest. Also, now that I think about it, Link is way, way lamer. Surprisingly this is in the writing, not Zac Efron’s performance, which was reasonably winning. Honestly though, if I didn’t know and love the original, and saw this in a vacuum, I would probably like it a lot more. Catchy songs though.
I’m glad I’m not the only person who knows about Meet Me in St. Louis. We watched that movie all the time when I was a kid, which wasn’t that long ago. An upside of this, though, is that when I start singing “I was drunk last night, dear mother…” my friends think it’s really random and hilarious. If only they knew I stole it.
Ashley on 05 Nov 2007 at 6:04 pm #
I’m glad I’m not the only person who knows about Meet Me in St. Louis. We watched that movie all the time when I was a kid, which wasn’t that long ago. An upside of this, though, is that when I start singing “I was drunk last night, dear mother…” my friends think it’s really random and hilarious. If only they knew I stole it.