Product: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat [VHS] (2000)
Rating: 2.0
Great visually, severely lacking musically
If I could somehow take my CD of Joseph and line it up with this video, I would love this video. Joseph is excellent, but everyone else is only so-so. Scratch that. Everyone else is pretty bad.Visually, this was fun to watch. There's one good part in "Joseph's Coat" where the brothers (I think it's the brothers...) grab the bottom of the coat and twirl it around so the bottom half forms a color wheel of sorts. The kids running up on stage is creative, but a bit cheesy. The sets are fantastic, but clearly are designed to keep the movie grounded in its Broadway musical roots.Also, it's difficult to explain in text, but the kids in the audience look dispairingly cheesy. They have these fake smiles plastered on their faces and generally look dumb. It would not surprise me to find that the kids choir was originally from a Broadway cast and thus accustomed to overaccentuating any sort of movement.The Narrator is really not very good. I can't explain why, but it just doesn't work.Potiphar is fairly good, but he spends so much time speaking his lines instead of singing them that you hear very little of what sounded to be an excellent voice.Jacob is weak. Even if the character is an old man, the part deserves to be a fairly strong singer.The first "Poor, Poor Joseph" (when he was tossed into the pit) was visually very amusing. Very funny, but the Narrator singing it was still not great.Donny Osmond is really the only character that seems to grasp that the movie should be presented as a movie, not an overly articulated and video-taped Broadway musical.(Please understand that I'm mentally playing through the video as I write this)"Go, Go, Go Joseph" was presented as an interesting disco party. I'm not sure of the original intentions, but that scene was enjoyable. The Butler and the Baker however were again let-downs.The French accents in "Those Canaan Days," although affected by all of the brothers and Jacob, were not very good. There was a lot of non-French accent creeping in.This video is no substitute for seeing it live. I've seen it live twice by both a touring company and a local theater and both were far superior to this video. If you want to listen to the music, I suggest the 1992 Canadian Cast Recording, which also contains Donny Osmond as Joseph.