West Side Story

The Doctor’s Diagnosis: C

               I should probably just get this out of the way: I don’t like musicals. I especially don’t like dramatic musicals because I just can’t take a big dramatic moment seriously when people are breaking into song and dance. In West Side Story, I can’t feel the tension of an impending knife fight between hated rivals when the dudes are prancing around each other and singing showtunes. The few musicals that I do like (such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Phantom of the Paradise) are intentionally campy and that is the arena in which the genre works for me. Therefore, I’m in quite a pickle when it comes to reviewing something like West Side Story. I hate the original. I hated nearly every moment of this new version, although I like it better than the original. But I also can’t come down too hard on it because it simply isn’t my thing.

               The “forbidden lovers” storyline ranks among the things that I enjoy even less than musicals, so that makes West Side Story a real delight for me. For the unaware, this is the story of the two least intimidating street gangs in history (the white Jets and the Hispanic Sharks) and a forbidden romance that transcends hate and shows us that true love knows no boundaries. Vomit. Anyway, a Jet named Tony and a Sharkette named Maria see each other at a dance, instantly fall in love and cause escalating violence between the two warring factions. It’s a tale as old as time. And I know it’s a tale as old as time because we’ve all heard it a million fucking times, coming from the days of Willie Shakespeare. Put it on a boat and you get Titanic, put in some androgynous vampires and you get Twilight, make a shitty Disney sequel out of it and you get The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride. But this time it has dancing. Lots of dancing.

               It may sound like I hate this movie and that’s because I hate this movie. But, speaking objectively, there are a number of nice things that I can say about it. For starters, the cast is great. Perhaps it’s because most of these people actually look like they are in their late teens and early twenties, rather than their late thirties and early forties like in the original, but I found the performances much more endearing here than in the original. Directed by newcomer Steven Spielberg, the film also looks gorgeous and has a heightened sense of tension compared with the original. I’m also something of a professional dancer, according to accounts of weddings that I was too drunk to remember, and the choreography here is impressive. I’m still not sure if dancing is warranted by the plot, but I’ve also never been in a street gang. Maybe that is how they operate. If any readers are in a street gang, please let me know in the comments.

               Aside from the improved performances and solid cinematography, this is basically a scene-for-scene remake of the original with two big exceptions. One of them works and one of them doesn’t. As a positive addition, this version introduces a subplot of gentrification to add depth to the plight of the two gangs and provide more context for why they are fighting so hard over a couple of shitty blocks of real estate. This being 2021, I was expecting this movie to be really heavy-handed and turn the white characters into complete villains and make the Hispanic characters into misunderstood angels. But, no, it actually doesn’t do that and the gentrification angle adds necessary context to both sides. Both sides are basically still comprised of complete assholes and there is a greater effort to show that they are the same sides of the same asshole coin. The other significant change is the placement of “I Feel Pretty”, which comes so late into the film that I was wondering if they actually had the balls to cut it out of the movie. In this version, it comes immediately after the big (dancing) brawl and the change didn’t work for me. I understand that the goal is an ironic juxtaposition with the dancing knife fight and ensuing tragedy (I’m also aware that this is how the scene is placed in the stage version), but it didn’t work for me. The tone feels more confused than ironic and the earlier placement of the song in the original film makes more sense as an early point in the escalation of the narrative. But, overall, it’s a minor point.

               This is a short review because I’m both really behind on writing these things and this movie is just completely removed from my wheelhouse. Steven Spielberg has wanted to make a musical for decades and his passion for the material and the genre clearly shows. How about this: I’ll just give it a C. If you like these kinds of movies, raise it into the B-A range. If you hate these kinds of movies, it will be in the D-F range. I saw it with my girlfriend (AKA The Film Nurse) and both of our mothers, and they all liked it quite a bit. This just isn’t for me, but my mom liked it. I guess I can’t be too angry.

Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Side_Story_(2021_film)#/media/File:West_Side_Story_2021_Official_Poster.jpg