Stars, Nine and Oscar travesty
For a show that is allegedly such a slam dunk box office hit, Legally Blonde’s display advertising campaign in the newspapers has an odd air of desperation about it.
And I was further surprised to see in yesterday’s Evening Standard that Whatsonstage.com’s over generous three star rating had been upgraded to four stars.
I’m sure this is an error that will be immediately rectified. But it looks bad.
And I’d hate to see producer Sonia Friedman faced with the concerted wrath of the fearsome Critics Circle backed up by legislation at the European Court of Human Rights.
Compared to Legally Blonde, of course, Nine by Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit really was a great musical, and a genuinely theatrical response, at a delightfulyl odd angle, to a great movie, Fellini’s 8 and a half.
Now in a process that outstrips the movie return even of Hairspray to its original form via the musical stage, Rob Marshall’s film of Nine adds new layers, new songs and pioneers a way of doing musical theatre on screen that doesn’t look cranky or banal.
Nine is as good as Marshall’s work on Chicago, probably better, and the delights of a cast that includes Sophia Loren as Daniel Day-Lewis’s mother and Marcello Magni as his doctor, are multiplied in the cross-cutting between the studio where he’s making the new movie, his encounters with women, his childhood memories and the use of songs to poeticise this cinematic mobility.
It’s utterly captivating and I can’t believe that Day-Lewis isn’t even nominated for an Oscar.
Nor is Marion Cotillard, so irritatingly self-consciously tragic as Piaf, who is simply sensational as the director’s wife. And there’s nothing but bravoes for Penelope Cruz (who is nominated, rightly, in the supporting actress category), Nicole Kidman (brilliant and enigmatic in the Anita Ekberg spoof role), Kate Hudson and Judi Dench.
The last time Dench and Day-Lewis acted together, in Hamlet at the National twenty years ago, the latter cracked under the pressure of being haunted by his own dead father, the poet Cecil Day-Lewis.
Day-Lewis as Guido Contini is undergoing a similar emotional meltdown here, but Dench is again on hand to pull him back from the abyss and set him once more on his creative way. It’s an intensely moving echo in the film.
Having lately sat through two insufferable movies — Colin Firth in A Single Man and, the absolute pits, James McAvoy, Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer in the Tolstoy story, The Last Station — Nine restored my faith in Hollywood.
You have to be as careful. I gather The Road is not half as good as it’s cracked up to be. And I’m certainly not going to risk Invictus, the Mandela and World Cup rugby movie; I’ve seen the trailer and I bet it’s one of those films that always turns out superfluous to the extract.
There will be no way of avoiding James Cameron’s Avatar, already the biggest grossing movie of all time. But I will for as long as possible. If it’s better than Nine I’ll eat my socks. And if Christopher Bummer wins an Oscar I’ll eat my feet, too.
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:57 pm
CLARIFICATION:
We have been informed that the advert in last night’s Evening Standard used the star rating given to the show by our readers (in our user reviews section) rather than the rating awarded by our critic Michael Coveney. The user reviews give the average rating of everyone who has seen the show and contributes a review to that section - in this case 15.
If nothing else it does go to show that critics and real ticket buyers can have very different opinions, something we at Whatsonstage.com embrace. All we can recommend is that you see it for yourself and form your own opinion.
David Dobson, Managing Director
February 3rd, 2010 at 6:37 pm
“Christopher Bummer”
A moderator might take issue with that comment. Or is any insult acceptable on a blog?
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:15 pm
Thats nothing new the Evening Standard did the same with Mamma Mia, the rating gradually moved up as they realised it was going to become a huge hit. Surely if you are going to spend lots on advertising you’re not going to spend it with someone who gives you bad ratings.
Two friends have seen Nine and recommended it to me, I will get to see it although it bombed at the box office making only a quarter of it’s production costs so far. Miss Dench does seem to appear in a lot of Bombed movies apart from when she’s playing M of course.
February 5th, 2010 at 10:20 pm
“Christopher Bummer?”
I would like to say that I am surprised at such a childish, puerile and silly comment (that some could, fairly enough, take objection to) from Mr Coveney, but I’m not. Smell that? It’s the smell of desperation. The dinosaurs must have caught a whiff of it before the ice age. I’m also surprised that MC didn’t object to the published reviews that gave a creaky Kenwright regional tour of Whistle Down The Wind (hastily pasted into a gap at the Palace a few years back) 5 stars, attributed to him. This was outra….oh, no. Wait. He gave it 5 stars.
February 8th, 2010 at 11:25 am
So people power is preferable for Legally Blonde! 1) is it clear in the advert? I think not. 2) How desperate, as MC says, is that? They’ll quote an audience member’s blog next. And obviously they can’t get an audience for the midweek mats - I’ve been bombarded with offers from ATG at less than half price for top price seats!
February 9th, 2010 at 5:16 pm
Did you write this in a bit of a hurry, Michael? The Firth film you disliked is `A Single ( not Singular) Man’ and the actor in `The Last Station’ is James McAvoy ( not McElvoy). As for Bummer, a typo, surely?!
February 10th, 2010 at 8:07 am
Funny sort of typo. On my keyboard,P and L are not close to B.
February 10th, 2010 at 8:33 am
THanks, Peter, mea culpa.
February 12th, 2010 at 9:51 am
The problem with Nine as a film and on stage is that it seems to be very much a “love it or hate it” work - and not enough people love it. I admit to going to see the film in the vain hope that I might like it more than the stage show that I didn’t enjoy at the Donmar some years ago. Day-Lewis and Dench were good, but it wasn’t enough to change my opinion of Nine. Another problem with the film is that it looks identical to Chicago, so perhaps a lot of Oscar voters felt it was too much like a remake of a film that was overrewarded before.
March 11th, 2010 at 12:52 pm
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