I’m dyin’ here
Gawd. I almost didn’t make it through this Les Miserables review I was laughing so hard.
But let’s talk about the “big” musical numbers. You don’t need to buy the soundtrack. I’ll sum up every song in the movie. Here you go: “I’m so lonely, I’m so alone, look at me my life is hard, I’m alone, I’m on my own, there’s this empty chair here, it’s empty because I’m alone, I’m lonely, all this bad stuff has happened to me because of my inexcusably stupid life choices, I’m alone, I feel so alone, on my own, on my own, on my own, did I mention I’m on my oooooowwwwwn?”
I like musicals. But I have no patience for the lovelorn bohemian stories. Only thing that kept me watching Moulin Rouge was the sheer riot of visual spectacle. Not gonna be seeing this version or any of Les Miserables. As the man notes: just because something is old doesn’t make it a classic. Malaria is old. Not classic.
I’m with the OAM on this (and he’s seen a version of the real thing). All I need to see of Les Miserables is the Animaniacs spot.
Or, should you want to watch a less suck version of Les Mis just do what I do: Watch “The Fugitive.”
And I can watch part of that here at home. :)
I read that sum-up of the musical numbers and immediately thought of Adele. Too exhausted by Teh Lonely Stuff to even stand up and sing.
LOL, the poor thing.
Good. I can save my $10. I get those kinds of songs out of some of my students on a regular basis anyway, including the stuff about inexcusably bad life choices. (I once had someone who had to miss class because he was going to court over, and I quote, his “baby momma.”)
Gah. I hate that term.
I read that last week and almost passed out from laughing so hard. He’s right, too. Besides, I saw the made-for-TV flick with Neeson and Assante. Why put music to it??
And Crowe?? WTF??
Yeah, I really don’t get that.
Awesome review! Nice Animaniac reference too ;-)
They were the best. Still can’t get Magellan out of my head. :)
Magellan said “What?” and got hit by a spear.
When I want to listen to Les Miz music, I listen to the edited versions in my head–the ones without lyrics. Pretty darned good that way. Otherwise, after one or two it’s all just whining and bitching and moaning.
The book’s pretty good though. The Victor Hugo “Les Misérables” not the “book” for the musical which is much more emotionally manipulative than the admittedly “soap opera” book. I found Hugo’s use of both personal experience and relatively contemporary characters from real life (whose experiences he ran through a sort of Roman à clef meat grinder) to have been pretty effective in his book–even in the fairly lousy translation I first read the thing in.
But the musical? Some good music pretty well ruined by just being too much of the same thing over and over lyrically, thematically. And like most musicals, or even opera, it paints the story with such a broad brush–it is essentially a stage production after all–that the storytelling is just far, far too much beating about the head and shoulders. Tiring. Heck, the book was even one of those rarities that I couldn’t just read straight through, either. Sitting through even a condensed, “Reader’s Digest” version in a musical, one that over-emphasizes all the dreary aspects of the story, for that matter, is just too much to ask, IMO.
But people raised on the hamfisted scene-chewing of soap operas seem to find it compelling. *shrugs* I suppose itd go over even better as a “rap opera”.
BTW, I agree that http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wrkv85FDQoM is pretty darned good, but then Im a sucker for anything from Animaniacs.
Thanks for linking that. I had fully intended to include that in the post and kept forgetting.
YW
I loath love stories. Especially singing ones.