Best Musical of the Year!

Rating: 10/10 (12 September 2010)

Burlesque, starring the fabulous Cher, Kristen Bell, Stanley Tucci, Cam Gigandet, Julianne Hough, and Alan Cummings, is without question the musical of the year! Now sure, there's not much competition. As a matter of fact, I'm failing at coming up with even one other musical from 2010, but that's beside the point. This is a quality musical!
One of the major failures that modern musicals have suffered from is an inability to truly entertain the audience aka the fun factor. Burlesque embraces the fun, and even delivers on the wow factor in several of many balls to the wall dance numbers. There is no holding back on these performances. The success is the film's ability to go completely over the top in these sequences, yet pull back in the moments that call for it. It's a tricky balancing act that a lot of similar films have not been able to manage. They usually end up going the campy route (see Showgirls) or play it safe and deliver a snooze fest (see Glitter).
Cher may be the big name in this movie, and she's great, but it's Cher. You know what to expect. The real surprise of Burlesque is Kristen Bell as Nikki. Just as Kristen Bell is not exactly the star of this show, Nikki finds herself left of center stage at The Burlesque Lounge. You get the sense that Nikki is completely aware of her destiny as a "never was", but she's going to make sure you know she's not happy about it.
The only place the film is really lacking is in its script. There's some PG-13 level romance that never connects to the audience, and really only distracts from what we really want to see - great music and great dancing. Plus, the dialog is pretty stale, the kind of one-liners you'll hear on The Disney Channel. The exceptions here being Cher and Tucci, who sometimes feel like they brought in their own team of writers to handle the characters of Tess and Sean.
Burlesque also marks the film debut of singer Christina Aguilera.