Musicals that don't work -- Corpse Bride (2005) and Gigi (1958)

After the opening musical number of Corpse Bride, I turned to Sarah and asked "you don't think this is going to be a musical, is it?" "I'm afraid so." "Damn."  Danny Elfman is a brilliant composer of quirky instrumental music, but this had the musical quality of a mediocre Rankin and Bass special.  Finis Everglot even looks a bit like a hairless Heat Miser.  The basic premise is great, the animation is beautiful, and the short scene between Victor/Victoria at the piano has real feeling to it, but that's about it.  The story has been stretched thin so it's just barely feature film length, and could anything be more trite and unnecessary than the fight between Victor and Barkis?  


We had high hopes for Gigi; it won the Best Picture Oscar** and was a Lerner and Loewe vehicle with Andre Previn overseeing the scoring -- it's like a proto-My Fair Lady!  Leslie Caron even has a small spark of Audrey Hepburn's magnificent screen presence, and Gigi has some of Eliza's innocence and spunk.  Gaston and Honoré are a bit like Higgins and Pickering, though sadly while Higgins is charmingly contemptible Gaston is merely contemptible.  We don't exactly start off on the right foot, with Honoré signing the unfortunate "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" that was soundly mocked by SNL in its first season, and then we meet Gigi, and then we spend far too much time with Gaston, and we're nearly halfway through the movie before we get back to Gigi.  Help!  We're dying of thirst!  Give us more of the character that has a little life to her!  Interestingly, perhaps because Gaston is so unlikable, the moment with the greatest feeling between two characters comes during the "I Remember it Well" sequence with Honoré and Madame Alvarez (the YouTube video unfortunately cuts out the dialogue prior to the song, and that is vital to properly understand their relationship).  Let's just chalk this up as a practice run for My Fair Lady, in which they got everything right.


** over Auntie Mame, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Separate Tables, and the Defiant Ones.  I doubt it would win a re-vote now.  My imaginary vote would go to Separate Tables, but I'm a sucker for David Niven.