[ SECRET POST #4220 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4220 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 21 secrets from Secret Submission Post #603.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Half of movie musicals don't have a plot and are just a string of random characters singing random songs? Surely you're not referring to half of the *successful* movie musicals, though.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

Well, setting aside moving the goalposts from "minimal plot" (which Cats has) to "don't have a plot."

Yes, tons of musicals are little more than vehicles for showcasing a famous songwriter's body of work. I just saw a review of Mamma Mia 2 that used the term "Jukebox Musical" to describe that. Singing in the Rain and American in Paris are two of the better examples. Some of the early talkie musicals didn't even have a plot, and just modeled themselves after theatrical revues. And then you have films like Stormy Weather where you have Cab Calloway and Fats Waller performances even though they do little more than introduce themselves to the heroine. The modern musical as a dramatic song sequence (Bernstein, Lerner-Lowe, Rogers-Hammerstein, Sondheim) started to take over about WWII, but the increase in quality meant that Hollywood wasn't producing quite as many as in the 30s.

Cats, at least, is a consistent song cycle that was intended for a single performance. Maybe they can get a good writer to tighten up the frame story a bit.

[(Anonymous)]

That's really not half of musical movies, and Mamma Mia has a plot. A bad plot is still a plot. It's not a cabaret, it has a cast of defined characters that tell the story.

Cats has probably the least amount of plot out of all critically acclaimed and popular musicals out there.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

I think you're deeply underestimating the sheer volume of musical films that studios produced both during the early talkie era and during the Berkley era. Granted, a lot of them are not all that popular today. Almost all of the most popular movie musicals come from the 40s and 50s after everyone got burned out on the old formulas and Hollywood was forced to innovate.