Lively song and dance numbers with lavish backdrops but not much else

Rating: 4/10 (9 July 2013)

Christina Aguilera seemed to be different from the garden variety teen idol princess. She seemed to have genuine talent despite a penchant for showing off just how many different notes she could cram into a single second and chose to focus solely on her music while her contemporaries such as Britney, Jessica, and Mandy Moore were embarrassing themselves in horrible movies. The fact that she seemed to be resisting the urge to make a crappy movie was in fact, quite admirable.
I guess I spoke too soon.
"Burlesque" is yet another rehash of the plucky-young-girl-with-talent-makes-it-to-the-big-time type of story only with the goal being dancing in her undies as opposed to landing a record deal. It's a bright, shiny, loud film that attempts to distract you with bright lights, gaudy costumes, and bouncy numbers to compensate for how truly empty it is. You can tell a lot of effort was put into set design and wardrobe as they are the only things about this film that could be considered top notch.
Performances are passable, but nothing to write home about. Christina does the best she can with an insufferable Mary Sue of a character and Cher does a decent job but nothing worthy of a second Oscar. However, Cher got an obvious collagen lip injection before this movie started filming and her new fish lips are quite distracting every time she has a close up. Stanley Tucci reprises the same snooty gay man role he played in "The Devil Wears Prada," Kristen Bell plays a rival with little motivation and everyone else is just kinda there. Alan Cumming, who can be entertaining, is wasted in a nothing role.
The music and the dancing are also pretty good but that's to be expected when you have an at-her-peak Christina Aguilera, Cher and "Dancing with the Stars' " ingénue Julianne Hough in the cast. The song lyrics, however, show an odd lack of imagination as four or five of them are about the art of burlesque alone. I was also disappointed that Cher only got two songs compared to the ten or so that Christina got.
The lack of creativity in the songs can probably be attributed to a non-existent plot. The plot revolves entirely around Christina's character, Ali, leaving behind her boring life in Iowa and taking a bus to L.A. where she lands a job waitressing in a nightclub and quickly works her way up the ranks and falls in love along the way snore. Other than the side plot about Cher's club being on the verge of bankruptcy, this is pretty much all that happens. There's some stuff about Stanley Tucci finding a boyfriend, Kristen Bell battling alcoholism, and Julianne Hough being pregnant but none of it has any bearing on the plot.
This spotlights the film's biggest problem: Ali is a blatant Mary Sue who monopolizes the entire movie. She comes to town and immediately wins everyone over. Cher promotes her to dancer in the show, Cam Gigandet leaves his fiancée for her and Eric Dane wants to get in her pants and throw money at her. Everyone loves her and she instantly becomes the main attraction of the club. She's a naturally gifted singer and dancer despite being an Iowa farm girl. They might as well have named her Strawberry Serenity Symphony Nightshade or something equally pretentious because she NEVER loses.
The plot also doesn't attempt to explore any of the ramifications of her rise to stardom. There's a sabotage subplot with Kristen Bell but it's quickly dropped. The movie never once deals with how Ali's new boyfriend might feel about her performing nightly in a highly sexualized stage show and it never attempts to explain her past or how a Midwestern girl with limited options in life and no family got to be such a great dancer and singer. Ali seems to have no aspirations beyond the club and despite being this amazing phenom who brings new customers in, it's still somehow going under. Perhaps if Cher would cut a few corners on her extravagant stage shows, she might save some money that way. Not to worry though because the writers find a different way for Ali to save the club, thus keeping her Mary Sue status intact.
Perhaps the saddest part of it all is that this movie not only derailed Christina Aguilera's career, it seemed to derail her personal life as well. After a mediocre showing, her marriage fell apart, she released the worst selling album of her career, she gained a noticeable amount of weight and gave several legendarily bad performances of the national anthem.
While the movie is deeply flawed, I don't think it's bad enough that Christina deserved to have her career ruined over it. She has no business acting but she still has a good voice and she should get a chance to redeem herself. If Britney can survive "Crossroads" and Madonna can survive "Shanghai Surprise," "Who's That Girl," "Body of Evidence," "The Next Best Thing," and "Swept Away," then Christina should get to put "Burlesque" behind her too.