From: frankm@microsoft.com (Frank R.A.J. Maloney)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: NEWSIES
Summary: r.a.m.r. #01331
Keywords: author=Maloney
Date: 17 Apr 92 14:36:33 GMT
Reply-To: frankm@microsoft.com (Frank R.A.J. Maloney)
Followup-To: rec.arts.movies
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA


				   NEWSIES
		       A film review by Frank Maloney
			Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney

     NEWSIES is a film directed and choreographed by Kenny Ortega.  The
songs are by Alan Menken and Jack Feldman.  It stars Christian Bale,
David Moscow, Luke Edwards, Robert Duvall, and Ann-Margaret.  It is
rated PG for mature themes.

     NEWSIES is a live-action musical from Walt Disney.  After Disney's
recent successes with animated musicals, also featuring Alan Menken as
co-composer, no doubt encouraged Disney to try to revive this mostly
moribund genre.  The result is a thorough enjoyable renewal of one of my
favorite forms.

     The story is based on an historical strike of newsboys, newsies, in
New York City in 1899 against Joseph Pulitzer.  There is, despite the
irony of Disney's own anti-union history, a moral quality behind the
leaping, flips, splits, and jumps that characterize the choreography, a
protest against the exploitation of children and the anyone helpless in
the face of money and power.  There's a lot of uplift in this musical,
so watch out.

     The music is excellent.  It advances the story rather than
interrupting it, it is tuneful, if you will, and it avoids both the
cliches of Andrew Lloyd Weber pseudo-operas and MTV dance videos.  The
director, Kenny Ortega, took on a big job in staging and filming several
very large, busy production numbers; this is his first directing job,
having been a choreographer only before, and some awkwardness is
inevitably apparent.  But still, he is more to be praised than cavilled.
It is by and large very impressive technically and artistically.

     The dance numbers are energetic, even athletic, as befits a cast of
young boys and teenagers, and heavily populated.  Christian Bale has one
solo dance number, which is charming and surprisingly good, with smaller
gestures and its own narrative vocabulary than the big production
numbers.  The performances are delivered with a fine conviction, a
purity, that won me over from the opening number.

     Christian Bale, by the way, is the wonderful boy star of Stephen
Spielberg's EMPIRE OF THE SUN (1987), who is mostly grown up to a
talented manhood now.  He is still a master of the mixed message, being
at once vulnerable and malevolent.  He backed up by David Moscow, a more
conventional kind of star, but still quite appealing in his own way.
Robert Duvall shows up sporting a patently false beard as Joseph
Pulitzer, whom Duvall brings to life through his vast and perceptive
treasury of shtick; in this case, Duvall accents Pulitzer's Jewishness
with a perhaps distracting repertoire of gestures right out of I
REMEMBER MAMA.  Of course, even Duvall can only do so much with a script
that largely reduces Pulitzer to two-dimensional villain.  The show is
rife with juicy villains and they provide a lot of the fun.

     One should also mention the appearance of Ann-Margaret as Medda the
Swedish Meadowlark.  She has a couple of numbers and gets to strut her
stuff behind a purple ostrich fan.

     On the technical side, a side I am barely competent to even refer
to, one has to be impressed by the detailed and authentic-looking sets
and costumes of fin-de-siecle New York, especially the Lower East Side.
But especially stunning are the mattes, especially one of the Brooklyn
Bridge that so amazing that it gets its own credit.  Surely, it will be
remembered next Oscartide.

     Disney deserves a lot of thanks for taking on the risking business
of reviving the live musical and in doing it in such a grand manner.  It
is not without reason that one of the persons particularly remembered in
the credits, along with Howard Ashman (Menken's late partner), is Gene
Kelly.

     I'm not saying the film is perfect, especially in the editing and
shooting of the dance scenes.  I am saying it's pretty darn good and
better than anything that's come along in a long while in this genre.

     If you like musicals, you will like NEWSIES, and you will gladly
pay whatever it takes to see it.  If you don't think you do like them,
you might want to risk a matinee ticket and give this one a try.  It
might very well surprise you.  It did me.

-- 
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
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