Had potential

Rating: 4/10 (22 January 2017)

I cannot remember being so bored in a theater. My wife, who loves romances, told me later she considered leaving after the first 30 minutes. Which is sad, because there are many good elements in the film and the story line, though thin, could have given us more reason for caring about the characters. Two young struggling artists meet, fall in love, but choose fame over love. Okay. Except there was no struggle. Unlike the thousands of people who do struggle to live a life in art, these two must have had trust funds. Every sequence that could have given the characters more depth was swept away in a song. Which brings me to the other problem. Great musicals have great songs, but the film had none (though the jazz scenes were very entertaining). The film did attain a level of excellence in the final scene sequence - a wistful musical imagining of what could have been. If the film as a whole could have reached this level, it would have been an excellent musical. Unfortunately it took an hour and a half before the film created sufficient context for the music and dance to have this level of relevance. Perhaps the film's popularity can be accounted for by unfamiliarity with the genre. Music Man or Cabaret it was not.