Cher and Tucci make this movie

Rating: 6/10 (29 December 2014)

"Burlesque" is a 2010 musical movie featuring some nice numbers. Cher really shines not only with her performance, but also brings it all to the table with "Welcome to Burlesque" and "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me". There's more musical numbers which work well such as the use of Madonna's "Ray of Light" or "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend". The latter, however, gets much worse when lead star Christina Aguilera (Ali) takes over. I totally wish they would have cast somebody else for that movie's central character. Her acting was mediocre at best and I am not a fan of her voice at all. It's all too much screaming for my taste. The only thing I can see going for her is that her looks are fine, better than most of the time during her pop music career. I remember always being more Team Britney when these two were the most influential new music stars. Still Aguilera looks good here. I found it a bit unrealistic though how such a girl has nobody how she tells us and her new boyfriend at one point. Apart from that, I did not find her really likable which she surely was intended to be. The way she tells Cher's character what to do comes off as pretty cocky and arrogant.
Cher plays Tess, the mother figure to all the girls in her club and I loved her scenes especially with Stanley Tucci, who is great as always and manages with ease to make this character his own. The film takes place in Los Angeles, near Hollywood, where dreams are made. A dream of mine would have been that the sometimes very cheesy script could have been done slightly better. When she tells Gigandet's character they are not brother and sister is one such scene. The whole relationship triangle with his fiancée felt a bit weak and half-baked. Also Ali's reaction at the end when the fiancée suddenly shows up is way over the top. If he did do anything wrong it was that he ended the relationship via phone, but Ali knew that and the way she lost it and ran away was simply ridiculous. The way she ran to the rich guy afterward had something slutty to it, even if it was only to find something out allegedly as we found out not much later. This one was played by Eric Dane, who you may know from "Charmed". For some reason I found myself cheering more for him than for Gigandet's character and that is quite a miss from the filmmakers. The negative highlight was maybe at the very end when Ali sang the song Gigandet's character wrote for her and neither the performance nor the lyrics did anything for me. At all. A very unworthy ending.
I believe "Burlesque" with some fine-tuning on the script and another lead actress could have turned out as one of the best musical movies in recent years. You can't even blame Aguilera as she has not acted before, but she is really lost in her scenes with all these professional actors next to her. I am usually not too big on Kristen Bell, but she was a revelation compared to Aguilera. What I liked about the film were the information on "bought air". I never thought about that, but it makes lots of sense, even if the final "Ali to the rescue"-twist is a bit cheesy. The film is written and directed by Steve Antin and it is his first really big project as a director. He wrote a Sharon Stone movie in the past and acted in "The Goonies", but you can occasionally feel that he lacks experience as a director while watching this. If there is anything the movie is really worth watching for, it is Cher. She has not acted in seven years before this came out and she has not forgotten anything. Pretty good turn from her. Her song "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me" won Diane Warren her first Golden Globe (for her 5th nomination, almost 10 years after the last), but missed out on an Oscar nomination. Same goes for the costumes and art direction where the Academy usually likes to nominate or even award musicals. All in all, it is a decent movie where the strengths slightly outweigh the weaknesses.