Burlesque **
The passion project of Screen Gems – a studio with the one of the highest hit rates in the industry due to the low production budgets of most of their releases and a tendency to only invest in projects that seem fairly reliable, along with the fact that they usually only invest higher amounts in proven properties – chief Clint Culpepper’s boyfriend Steven Antin, Burlesque is a prime example of what happens when personal issues get in the way of business decisions in the film industry.
Boasting a production budget of $55 million – the second biggest in the studio’s history behind only Resident Evil: Afterlife, a film that had earned its $60 million as a result of the success of the preceding three films – this is a film that caused so much strife between the two in the form of budget, scheduling and creative decisions that they have now apparently broken up after 20 years…ouch. The resulting film is one that is extravagant and perhaps even garish, so much so that it has already been touted by many to this year’s answer to last year’s catastrophe Nine. If the film has anything going for it, though, it would be the return of Cher to the big screen, playing her first major role since 1999’s Tea with Mussolini, as well as the acting debut of fellow singer Christina Aguilera, perhaps the only two things for which the film has earned itself any attention, the former earning the most with her publicity appearances including an appearance on The Graham Norton Show last week. With a title that pretty much says it all, Burlesque is not a film that pertains to surprise us in any way but does it at least achieve that much sought after designation of bad movies in being so bad that it is good?
Ali (Christina Aguilera) is a waitress tired of her mediocre existence in Iowa. She moves to Los Angeles hoping to become a star with her singing voice and dance moves but things don’t seem to be going in her favour until she stumbles across The Burlesque Lounge, a grand burlesque theatre whose best days are seemingly long gone, its owner Tess (Cher) and co-owner, her ex-husband Vince (Peter Gallagher), struggling to raise enough money to pay off their mortgage before the club is repossessed while costume guy Sean (Stanley Tucci) does his best to keep Tess looking on the bright side. Ali is immediately entranced by the spectacular world of burlesque dancing and tries hard to become the club’s latest dancer but Tess is reluctant. So, with the help of bartender Jack (Cam Gigandet), she gets a job as a waitress at the club, hoping that the opportunity will come to impress Tess and take her place on the club’s stage. Her persistence pays off and Tess agrees to give her a shot but in the process she gains an enemy in the shape of the club’s leading act, the bitchy Nikki (Kristen Bell). An act of sabotage by Nikki, however, results in Ali’s incredible singing voice being revealed to the club and Tess realises that Ali might just be what is needed to save the club. And restore it to its former glory. As Ali’s star skyrockets she finds herself getting attention from two potential male suitors, firstly the kindly Jack and also charismatic entrepreneur Marcus Gerber (Eric Dane), the very man determined to buy the club and tear it down. As she finds herself immersed in the art of burlesque, Ali must face up to some challenging life decisions.
Burlesque is a film that only really has one thing going for it and that is its dance numbers. Extravagant and over the top just like the kind of thing you might expect to see at a show in Las Vegas, the numbers feature some very good if not overly memorable choreography (they were both associate choreographers on Nine for which the choreography was also not regarded to be that great by many critics) by Joey Pizzi and Denise Faye and if you like your dance routines to be sultry and seductive you will love every minute of them. Just like the setting of The Burlesque Lounge itself – which boasts some extravagant set design – the numbers bring together sleaze and seediness with a feel of class and sophistication, the dance moves all very suggestive and the costumes – also very extravagant – extremely revealing. Suffice to say if you enjoy watching dance routines that are full of sparkle and glitter and laden with sequins you will be very appreciative of this aspect of the film. The sequences also boast some very good singing even though some numbers only feature the character lip-syncing to the lyrics of famous singers rather than performing themselves – something that is made note of in the film. When the real singing begins it is hard to fault, Christina Aguilera – who is the executive music producer on this film – being an excellent singer and Cher being even better, both given some very good lyrics to work with and superb music to back them up. The problem with the film, though, is that while the singing and the dancing is good, very little else is. The acting is weak, good actors like Stanley Tucci and an entertainingly camp Alan Cumming being wasted in largely insignificant roles while Christina Aguilera and Cher just can’t act as well as they can sing, even if the mother-daughter sort of dynamic that forms between the character just about works and they do generally prove passable. The only really positive thing I can say, surprisingly, is about Kristen Bell who proves to be far more capable of playing the bad girl than at playing the nice girl as seen in this year’s When in Rome and You Again but even she is hardly much good here. The blame for this, however, is as much Steven Antin’s (who both writes and directs) as it is the actors, the storyline being completely predictable and obvious – it is one that you will likely have seen before many times, a classic rags to riches kind of tale, only robbed to genuine interest for the audience – the characters being paper thin in terms of development, the dialogue often cheesy or corny – e.g. “What’s Ali short for”, says Sean, to which she replies “Alice” prompting him to say “Well, welcome to Wonderland” – but never memorable and generally quite lacklustre and clichéd, and with that the many dialogue based sequences completely failing to interest. The resulting lack of interest for the scenes that fill in the story for the film is something that feels far more like a collection of music videos loosely strung together than a complete movie, a film that boasts lots of flash but very little substance and becomes rather repetitive as it progresses, being sensational in terms of its musical numbers but completely mediocre with regard to everything else. No doubt some people won’t mind these flaws and will in fact love this film but I certainly didn’t and factor in the fact that I really can’t see why this film would cost $55 million to make then you have something I can’t really recommend much. There is the occasional instance of beautiful cinematography, the opening shot of the sun shining about a remote Iowa town being particularly noteworthy, but this is little saving grace for a film that may look snazzy from the outside but is completely hollow on the inside. Suffice to say, Cher’s much hype return to the big screen proves underwhelming. There is really one thing and one thing only to see Burlesque for and that is the dance numbers and even those, I suspect, may not be everyone’s cup of tea.
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Review by Robert Mann BA (Hons)
© BRWC 2010.
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