ROLL OF A LIFETIME

Now in the multiplexes, from Fathom Events:

Merrily We Roll Along--Fanatics of Stephen Sondheim don't need, and anyway wouldn't listen to, advice about whether or not to go see this. Directed by Maria Friedman, the film captures her revival of the musical, starring Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez, that sold out its Broadway run starting in 2023.

With music and lyrics by Sondheim and a book by George Furth, based on a '30-era play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, the show recounts the long relationship between three dear friends, composer Frank (Groff), lyricist Charlie (Radcliffe) and novelist and critic Mary (Mendez). The gimmick is that it traces the story backwards, starting in the mid-70s with Frank as a jaded Hollywood bigshot, estranged from Charlie, and working back until we see the trio's callow, idealistic aspiring days in the late '50s. Love, unrequited and otherwise, ambition, neglect, compromise, disillusionment and resentment are all seen in full bloom before we see their seeds being planted years earlier.

The first Broadway production flopped in 1977. But the show eventually developed a devoted cult across several successful revivals around the world, before triumphantly returning to Broadway at the Hudson Theatre under the Brit Friedman's direction (and revisions). The version that opens in the multiplexes this weekend consists of footage shot from three performances in front of audiences near the end of the run in June of 2024, with some close-ups shot during the afternoons. As a result it isn't just a blunt recording of a performance; Friedman's agile, on-point direction makes it a cinematic experience.

Characteristically for Sondheim, the songs explore timeless, often painful human situations in bright, frenetic patter-song lyrics. They're so manically precise that they could seem facile at times, but Sondheim's direct emotional honesty holds glibness at bay. So, here, do the performers. The supporting cast is full of knockout Broadway workhorses, but Groff, Radcliffe and Mendez are all sublime, with Groff bringing a particularly enraptured intensity to Frank.

It's possible that the timing of the shoot also added to the emotional charge of the movie; we're seeing actors at the end of a run, saying farewell to a smash that's also likely to be one of the better pieces of material they're ever going to get to do. The tears we see running down their faces probably aren't just acting.

Now available on HBOMax:

The Family McMullen--At the end of the 1995 indie fave The Brothers McMullen, the debut feature of writer-director Edward Burns, the major characters seemed more or less happily paired off. This thirty-years-later sequel shows us the mess that divorce, death, kids and life in general has made of those well-plotted courses. For award eligibility, the movie played for just one day in the multiplexes in October; The Wife and I caught it here in Phoenix in a theater empty save for one other couple, but now it's available for streaming.

It begins on one Thanksgiving and closes on the next. The host for the first dinner is the long-divorced Finbar "Barry" McMullen (Burns), an apparently successful writer, to judge by his palatial Brooklyn home. Much to his dismay, said home gets invaded after dinner by his relations, like his sad-sack brother Patrick (the likable Michael McGlone), a mawkishly sentimental, piously practicing Catholic who's reluctantly also in the process of divorcing.

Barry's son Tommy (Pico Alexander) then moves back home to pursue an acting career, followed by Barry's daughter Patty (Halston Sage) who has broken off, or at least temporarily paused, her engagement because the fiancé wants to experiment with more sexual partners. She soon meets her first childhood crush, a handsome Greek-American plumber (Sam Vartholomeos) who makes her wonder if maybe the fiancé isn't on to a good idea.

Meanwhile Barry and Patrick's widowed sister-in-law Molly (Connie Britton) plans to sell the  cherished, frozen-in-the-'80s McMullen home back on Long Island; she also crosses paths with an old crush (Bryan D'Arcy James) from her married days. And Barry learns that the mother of her son's new love Karen (Julianna Canfield) is Nina (Tracee Ellis Ross), an old flame of his. If you're guessing that those two re-connect...

...well, you'll just have to watch and see. Driven along by Seamus Egan's sprightly Irish flute score, The Family McMullen is, like the Brothers, extremely low-key and mild, and I found that to be just what I wanted. The characters gently rib and mock each other over a palpable undercurrent of love and an openhearted desire to be decent, and if nothing terribly dramatic, or even terribly farcical, happens to resolve the plotlines, that relaxing atmosphere itself becomes part of the movie's charm.

It may be that The Family McMullen will have particular appeal for those who came of age as moviegoers during the '80s and early '90s. Burns makes overt visual and verbal references to such faves of the era as Moonstruck, When Harry Met Sally and (most hilariously) GoodFellas, and the whole movie, with its crosscutting storylines, its voice-over asides and its use of a holiday as a framing device, seems heavily indebted to Woody Allen's Hannah and her Sisters. It's grimmer to imagine where Allen's characters might find themselves, thirty-some years later.

MERRY CHRISTMAS...

...from Less Hat, Moorhead!

Into the Woods—A friend of mine likes to say that “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” and “Pittsburgh” are two of the more aptly named entities in creation. I can’t agree with him about the second; I’ve always been fond of Pittsburgh. But there’s no arguing the grimness of those tales.

So Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1986 fairy-tale musical Into the Woods can’t really be called “dark” by comparison to its source material. This retelling of several Grimm yarns is dark only by comparison to the toned-down and glitzed-up style of fairy tales popularized by Disney and its ilk over the past century. Perhaps ironically, it’s Disney that has produced the lavish, star-studded and entertaining movie version of Into the Woods opening today.

Set, like a Ren Faire, in a period-vague Once Upon a Time with elements of the Renaissance, the 19th Century and the 20th Century—the Big Bad Wolf dresses like a swing dancer—Into the Woods weaves the stories of Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk around the plight of a Baker and his Wife who are unable to conceive. These two learn from a neighborhood Witch that this is because of a curse upon their house. She gives them the recipe to lift the curse, which brings them into contact with the other characters.

Rob Marshall, who more or less revived the big-screen musical as a viable genre with his 2002 Chicago, directs nimbly, but with an agreeably more straightforward, less hyper-cut style. His work is accomplished, but as usual with musicals, the real key to its success lies in the cast, and the score.

The standouts in the cast, for me, were Meryl Streep, a hoot as the Witch, Emily Blunt as the Baker’s potentially naughty Wife, James Corden as the kindly young Baker, and a startling, apparently genetically-engineered little belter called Lilla Crawford as Red Riding Hood. Johnny Depp is droll in the brief role of the Wolf, Tracey Ullman is funny as Jack’s fed-up Mum, Anna Kendrick makes a sweet Cinderella, and as her self-impressed Prince Charming, Chris Pine, along with Billy Magnussen as Rapunzel’s Prince, scored spontaneous applause from the preview audience with whom I saw the film for their self-parodying duet “Agony.”

As for the score, it’s very, well, Sondheim-y, which for many is about the highest compliment a score can be paid. It’s pretty, if not, overall, as melodically soaring as some of Sondheim’s; it has a more frenetic, haywire sound, in support of the complex, almost patter-song lyrics. It’s compelling, though—when each number is done, you know you’ve really heard something, and you want to hear it again.

About halfway through the movie—at the end of Act One in the stage version—the plot strands are all ingeniously brought to a traditionally happily-ever-after resolution. But Sondheim and Lapine want to remind us that happily-ever-after is fantasy, and that a wish fulfilled always comes at a price—worth it, maybe, but never painless.

The long second act in which the characters wander the forest, struggling with the consequences of their wishes, is the unconcealed point of Into the Woods. But while there is much good music and comedy in this section, you can feel the impatience of the audience—plenty of them were quite satisfied with the corny fake ending, and palpably regard this elaboration as a tiresome imposition (I understand the school-play version of the show simply drops Act Two). It isn’t enough to ruin Into the Woods, but many viewers would have been perfectly happy with happily-ever-after.

So anyway...

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s make this triceratops skeleton come to life in Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb our Christmas Day MOTW…