How wonderful it is to watch a musical! To witness performers at the peak of their talents and abilities sing and dance like there's no tomorrow! To visit worlds where emotions bubble over into chorus lines, ballads, and Technicolor dreamscapes! To discover a new musical is like discovering a new love, a new passion that seeps into your very bones until you can't help but cry 'Hallelujah!' Such was my experience with Richard Quine's My Sister Eileen, one of the most sublime musicals that I have seen in ages. Based on the 1940 play by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov, My Sister Eileen tells the story of two sister from Ohio who move to New York City with dreams of becoming famous. Ruth wishes to be a writer. Eileen wants to be an actress. Ruth is chastised for being cold and emotionally frigid. Men step over each other to try and please Eileen. And yet, as the days turn to weeks, neither Eileen or Ruth can get work. Things begin to get hopeless...but then hope comes in the form of three men: Bob Baker, the Lothario editor-in-chief of Mad Hatter magazine, the shy but sincere soda jerk Frank Lippencott, and the devious newspaper reporter Chick Clark. Together they just might make it...Though My Sister Eileen lacks the massive ensembles of a Busby Berkeley flick or the show-stopping music of a Gershwin production, the film dazzles with impressive number after number: Frank and Chick's back-alley dance-off for Eileen's affections, the foursome dance in the park, the chaotic Brazilian conga line invasion, and Ruth and Eileen earnestly belting out the inspiring I'm Great. My Sister Eileen is a treasure of a film. I can't wait to watch it again!
8/10
No comments:
Post a Comment