Sugar, Spice and all things Niche

Rating: 6/10 (23 December 2010)

From seemingly nowhere there has been a recent outburst of interest in all things Burlesque, transmogrified by fashion, dance and other mediums in an attempt to modify the niche into something more commercial and accessible. So it's no surprise that Hollywood would get in on the action with Burlesque (2010) a feature length debut for Christina Aguilera alongside fellow musical behemoth Cher.
Stylistically Burlesque is a musical, although luckily there are no spontaneous outbreaks of song and dance except for when Cher decides to sing us a song to signify how fed up she is. Ultimately everything is constructed around the theatre and performance, driven by a collection of music/cabaret video sequences glued together by what turns out to be a fairly interesting set of characters and stories. Centrally we have a little cliché, Ali (Aguilera) is a small town girl from Iowa who decides she wants to leave behind everything to pursue the dreams and promise of Los Angeles. Destiny guides her to would be mentor Tess (Cher) the divorced, struggling owner of a neo-Burlesque club "The Burlesque Lounge". Ali becomes enamoured with the club, as well as Jack (Cam Gigandet) a hunky barman whose already complicated love life is thrown into further turmoil when he find himself with Ali as a makeshift roommate.
The tagline reads "It takes a LEGEND... to make a STAR!" which is sort of embolismic of the Aguilera/Cher partnership, Cher herself has managed to put together a fairly impressive acting career and her young on screen protégé is quite impressive in this debut. We see Ali jumble the juxtapositions of her womanhood, love life, her career and the accompanying emotions they bring to good effect. Christina already has the look of a Hollywood star and the talent is on show here to suggest that she could have a substantial big screen future. Cher does her bit too playing the struggling business woman married to her struggling club which she faces losing, until Ali's hidden singing talents re-energises her club and show. The Sharks are circling meanwhile and Tess must fight them off if the club is to survive, among the predators are an Ex-husband (Peter Gallagher) she must buy out, an aggressive Tycoon (Eric Dane), and the destructive jealousy of her former star pupil (Kristen Bell).
There are some problems however, script and resulting dialogue are a little misjudged, often being overly fluffy and cute instead of really taking on some of it's themes with real bite. Hence the message of the film is a little lost somewhere between feminist empowerment and the true nature of Burlesque as an art form, with the latter summed up by the repeated lines "They're not here to hear us sing" which appears to fall on deaf ears. As a result Burlesque's audience is a little ambiguous possibly the price to pay when bringing a niche into the mainstream.