On the cast recording of Bye bye Birdie I have, there is a bonus track of Charles Strause (The composer) doing "Put on a Happy Face" live and before he sings it he tells the story of how that song was almost cut. The song was originally sung right towards the end of act 1 with Albert singing it as he is preparing for the Ed Sullivan show. No one responded well to the song and it was only at the encouragement of Strause's wife to move the song that it worked. There are two moments very much like that in Every Little Step, a documentary about the casting process of 2006's revival of A Chorus Line.
Blending interviews, auditions, footage from the original show and audio from the famous night that birthed the show, Every Little Step is attempting to condense about 2.5 hrs worth of movie into a little under 90 minutes, leaving much to be desired. The audience gets the history of the show, complete with a few great anecdotes, which are probably the strongest aspects of the film. Obviously Michael Bennett is not around to tell this story, but the directors of the documentary have put together all of the people who were around him while he was putting together the show and they create a very vivid picture of what it was like trying to get A Chorus Line on Broadway.
However, the movie is going to live or die with the audition process and the people who are auditioning. If you know the revival there will not be much suspense in the show, in fact, the movie does not do a very good job of giving us any real suspense or drama. We are introduced to a young beautiful girl named Jessica, and I guess she is meant to be the girl we connect to, but the movie is trying to give us so many small stories on so many different girls that Jessica gets lost, which is too bad because her journey is by far the most interesting of any of the cast. Jessica is the least likely to get cast in one of the lead roles and when she gets it, we do not even really get to see her elation at it. We see Jessica talking to her family about it, but not her face when she got the call. It is a big miscue by the directors. We do get to see plenty of those great moments of "I can't believe I got the job" but Jessica is the girl we were supposed to be rooting for and she was the underdog. She went to the last audition thinking she was just being looked as an understudy and she stole the role and we did not get to see that!
We do get a nice intimate peek in on how Broadway musical auditions happen and that is nice for those of us who love musical theater, but I am not sure how interesting the whole process is for people who do not already have a love for the genre. The 3 callback days being spaced out every four months was interesting and provided the only real drama because the creative team had two girls they loved at the second call backs, but in the final call back the two girls did not do it the same way and when given the shot to do it again, both girls were freaking out trying to remember what they did nearly 8 months earlier. It seems a bit tedious to try and ask for the exact same thing these girls did 8 months ago, but I guess that is the way it is done.
I wanted to really feel like I was living inside the experience all of these actors were having and I wanted to feel the highs and the lows, but save for one audition (Jason Tam for Paul) I did not emotionally connect to any of the auditionees. I did have a nice response to the father of one of the women auditioning and I feel the directors of this film got lucky by having him to include. There was just nothing grabbing me and I was wondering if this really was worthy of a big screen release, when it felt more like a PBS special. Even documentaries need to have drama and conflict and this movie just does not have either one of them. I understand that the directors have to work with the footage they have, but surely they could have created a better sense of drama with the actors and their stories of the actors' lives. Instead, the 90 minutes are full of semi interesting stories and kind of interesting people and a whole lot of leotards and one girl named Nikki with amazing abs.
Final Grade: D
No comments:
Post a Comment