The Music Man

This re-make is absolutely great!!! The musical numbers are fabulously choreographed and the songs are catchy. The actors all turn in wonderful performances and the script is almost identical to the original version. Although this version is not QUITE as good as the original (let's face it - nobody does it like Robert Preston), it is still a well-done re-make. I would give it 8 stars out of 10. It rocks!!!

Well, The Music Man is one of my all time favorite musicals. There were aspects about this one that I preferred to the original and some that I didn't. I have been in the stage version before and I noticed that they made this movie more similar to the stage version than just like the original movie. For example, they put in the reprise of pick-a-little, talk-a-little, etc...

First of all, the casting. I thought that if I hadn't seen the original movie version of this musical I would have enjoyed Matthew Broderick in this role a lot more. I thought he was good, but he didn't hold a candle to Robert Preston's performance as Harold Hill. He wasn't as convincing as Harold Hill as I hoped he would be. Overall, I wasn't impressed with him.

Kristin Chenoweth is definitely someone in this musical that I was impressed with. I really didn't think I would like her in this role, but I think I actually liked her better than Shirley Jones. I knew how well she fit the role of Sally in the new Broadway version of "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown" and after that, I was having trouble picturing her as Marian Paroo. I still found her speaking vioce a little annoying and Sally-ish, but I thought she made it work. I think what I liked most about her performance was the change I saw in the character of Marian throughout the movie. I saw the transition from the up-tight librarian to a woman who is a lot looser and not as shrewish. I never saw that in the version with Shirley Jones. I really saw Marian fall for Harold Hill in this version, I don't think Shirley Jones played that up as well as she could have.

A couple complaints I have about this version are the fact that I found the girl playing Zaneeta Shinn pretty annoying and...well...not very good. Her "Ye Gods" was...well...just kind of...blah. I found the dance number of Shapoopi to be pretty weak, also. I thought that Harold and Winthrop's thing was cute and I thought that the Shinns' thing was cute, but where was all the fun dancing?

I don't really know how I felt about Molly Shannon playing Eulalie. I thought Hermione Gringold was perfect in that role in the original movie, but I really had no problem with Molly Shannon in this role. I didn't think she was better or worse, just different. Victor Garber could have been better, though. The role of the mayor is an entertaining role and he didn't really play up the mayor's stupidity as much as he could have. Same for the guy who played Marcellus. He could have put more into it. Buddy Hackett made this role unique and fun. This guy just made it...okay. Not bad, but not very good either.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie more than I thought I would. Mainly because of Kristin Chenoweth. I didn't think this movie was great, but it wasn't bad. It was...fine.

Someone once said it best years ago... "Why do they remake the good ones?? Why don't they go back and redo the ones that weren't good the first time?" People often (reluctantly) admit that they miss the glory days of the screen musical (and they're on the cusp of making a comeback), but at this rate, the genre will be dead and buried within another year! This atrocious, wrongheaded TV remake really has only one thing going for it. The producers wisely decided to leave the script (mostly) alone. The actual shooting script is extremely close to the stage version. But it's all for naught! The casting, cinematography, lighting, acting, singing and direction are in almost all cases ghastly. It is blasphemy to even mention Robert Preston's name (or even Shirley Jones'!) in the same breath as this train wreck, but Broderick never stood a chance at topping him. Trouble is....he couldn't even top high school actors who have tackled this role! He is so wrong for the part that it's startling and distracting. His expression in the numbers is that of someone who was walking by and accidentally got caught up in them instead of someone who's instigating them. The inherently talented, but helium-voiced Chenowith is not much better. Saddled with a hairstyle that looks like either a dishwater-colored mop or a new perm she isn't allowed to wash yet, she sings her songs in the currently popular Broadway style. That is to say she oversings them with forced emotion, shrill vibrato, horrible annunciation ("Sweeedreams be yours dear") and no regard for the time and place. Her hair nearly does her in. The stylists on this film obviously have no idea that a performer's primary tool is her FACE. When it's obscured by hair (not helped by the murky lighting), the expression is muted. (For proof, look how much more attractive and bright she seems when hats shove the unruly curls away and leave just her features on view.) The whole film is muted. None of the numbers end with a bang. They all fizzle out and die. There is little or no build to them. No punch. Song after song after SONG is derailed by lackluster presentation and no sense of excitement or energy. Also, the production design is deadly. This is not "The Grapes of Wrath" or even "Little House on the Prairie"! The dusty reality of an early town is unwelcome here. The story is a FABLE (a Pied Piper who winds up having a heart) and should look the way we wish it had been, not the way it was. The original film was a flawless candy box of color and character and splendor. This version is a washed out, lifeless, drab, "why bother" mess. A decision was made to remove makeup from nearly all the characters. So Shannon's expressions (which are merely toned down versions of her Mary Catherine Gallagher persona anyway) don't come across. Chenowith lisps her lines into the blank, pie face of Broderick whose eyes are unlined dots lost in a sea of childlike flesh. Yet Monk, as Chenowith's mother, looks like she's ready for the Emmys! Monk does okay and the little boy is all right, but Garber approaches his character as if he's completely unfamiliar with the material. There are a few teeny touches that are clever, but their merit is erased by the many other moments which are botched (the marbles in the library, the piano lesson punchline, to name just two.) "Bye Bye Birdie" and "Annie" were decent enough, but "Cinderella" (with Brandi and Whitney slaughtering every song) and "South Pacific" (with the 60-year-old Nellie Forbush) were rotten. This joins the latter pile. Pray that Shirley Jones was out the night this was broadcast. It is a travesty! Fears now persist that this breed of musical interlopers will do more harm to "Mame" than even Lucille Ball did in 1974! Please let there be a way to prevent "West Side Story" and "The Sound of Music" from being dimmed by this horrific trend of haphazardly remaking and updating classic works!! (One note: WHY is this film rated a 7.9 today when nearly every comment is -rightfully- negative?!?!)

No one does it like Robert Preston. That's the main think this movie proved. This was the second of two classic musicals that Disney has tried to remake into TV movies in the past few years. They did the same thing with this as they did with Annie, and the result was the same as well. Both movies seem just a little too... for lack of a better word, unnatural.

Of course, this movie had to compare to an original that has been considered a classic for a long time. It's the story of "professor" Harold Hill, a traveling salesman who's latest trick is to find trouble in a town and then use it to make the townspeople believe they need a boys band to reform their youth. He sells them all the instruments, music, and uniforms they need, then heads out of town before he can teach them a thing. Hill's latest target is River City, Iowa. Everything seems to be going fine, but he just might have met his match in the town librarian, one of the few who won't buy his story.

Yes, the story is classic, but it wasn't quite enough to save this rather unnerving remake. Disney pulled together quite a cast: Matthew Broderick, Kristin Chenoweth, Victor Garber, and Molly Shannon. However, that didn't save this film either, though the performance of one of the leads certainly is a large part of the reason this film has the rating it has. It's hard to say exactly why this film fails to satisfy, but it sadly does just that. First of all, it just doesn't seem to work quite as well as the original. The extended dance sequences seem out of place and weird, even though they are splendidly done. Probably, the largest reason of all that this film just isn't great is because no matter how much you deny it, you are comparing it to the original. It just doesn't compare. However, there is one thing that makes it worth while.

Kristin Chenoweth shines as Marian Paroo, the town librarian. With this film, she proves that she can easily take on a leading film role. Ms. Chenoweth really steals the show with her unmatchable voice and superb acting. I really think she out-did the original woman in the role. It's near the end that you realize that she truly is a lead. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for Matthew Broderick. One has to give him credit for being brave enough to take on such a set-in-mind role, but that is actually his downfall. He just isn't Robert Preston- no one ever will be again. Mr. Preston gave one of the better performances of our time, and Mr. Broderick simply can't beat that. At times, he even borders on what looks like insanity. Poor, Matthew. This won't shine as a fine moment in his career at all. The only other really good performances in the show were Debra Monk and David Aaron Baker as Mrs. Paroo and Hill's friend Marcellus, respectively.

Really, the only problem with this is it's not the original. Unfortunately, there won't be a remake that can ever equal the original. As I said before, no one does it like Robert Preston. This film proves that. 5/10 stars.

Jay Addison

Reaction to this production has been very emotional and on the musicals board I have had to endure the most incredible bashing because I actually liked it.

Some people have been critical of my opinion because I had the temerity to assume they were comparing it to the classic movie version, which I adore. They weren't thinking of that at all. Yeah, right.

This was a great production of this great musical. I have no reservations. I'm sorry if the Harold Hill was not the creepy crawly we are used to in Robert Preston or that Marion was not the sweet fickle thing we knew in Shirley Jones. It is of the nature of musicals and of stage plays that were not written as screenplays in general to be open to various interpretations in various producations. I've seen a dinner theatre version of West Side Story that was better than the movie.

I just don't get the criticism, most of which is based on our image of Broderick, who will turn 40 next month. He lacks neither the talent nor the presence nor the experience to pull this off, and boy did he pull it off!

At the risk of making a ludicrous juxtaposition, a musical as great as Music Man is like Shakespeare. It has to be defeated by wilfull misinterpretation rather than lifted into triumph by faithfulness to what it is all about, because just doing it right is all that is needed. The Disney production was not a misinterpretation, and it does it right.