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YOU'RE THE ONE THAT I WANT (sic)
"Do you want a Mars bar?"

Famously the musical (and old Hollywood) was supposed to have died in the flames of the monster flop NEW YORK, NEW YORK in the `70s but there are still signs of life in the corpse yet and the spirit certainly lives on. Which just shows to go ya – as they sang in MOVIE! MOVIE! – that sometimes life does indeed stink.

There are, however, definite categories into which musicals can be placed and not all are as perfidious in their effects as some of the others. We can of course excuse the likes of MARY POPPINS which is, and will always remain, not only the Greatest Musical Of Them All but also the best thing Walt Disney and his stormtroopers ever committed to celluloid, largely because of David `plantations of ripening teeeeeeeea' Tomlinson, we would contend.

The next best musical is without a doubt the tremendous SWEET CHARITY in which Shirley Maclaine is required to stand to one side a lot as the rest of the cast and chorus get involved in some of the most staggeringly 60s tableaux you ever did see. And with that cast involving Stubby `children's programme Dr WHO?' Kaye and Sammus Davis Jr. then it's all good. It doesn't even have a happy ending! Others which can be quite comfortably lined up here in the good seats include the recently fashionable CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG which of course that was written by Ian Fleming in a radical diversion from his usual fare. So instead of Bond we get mad foreign dictators, fantastical gadgets, kidnapping, spies and mad scientists. Yes, versatility was indeed Fleming's middle name.

Also amongst the acceptable face of musicals come the various constituents of the Muppet film canon, although these (along with the more palatable Disney efforts such as ALADDIN and THE JUNGLE BOOK and other greats like THE PRODUCERS and THE WIZARD OF OZ) tend to edge rather more towards the Musical Films category, which is entirely different. Also more than acceptable is A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM if only because it features not only a musical number with Zero `Murder Inc.' Mostel, Phil `Top Banana' Silvers and Michael `Bear' Hordern but also Jon `arrant nonsense' Pertwee, Peter `strawberry moooooooousse' Butterworth and the joke: "He raped my country Thrace!" "He raped Thrace?" "And then he came back and did it again and again!" "He raped Thrace thrice?" Which is the worst line in any film ever.

Now that the actually good examples are out of the way, the next level in musical hell is still bearable but only just and covers Musicals Your Gran Likes. These involve those efforts which are screened constantly on television (for some reason always at Easter especially though less so at Christmas; we know not why) and have therefore almost shrugged off the cocoon (which description we think is rather apt considering the audience) of their original birth period in the cinema. In fact, only grandparents are now qualified to speak the words "I saw that in the pictures" in conjunction with most musicals (or, at least, the half-decent ones). So, any black and white features such as TOP HAT or even the best colour ones such as SINGING IN THE RAIN which has such a genuinely entertaining story line that it almost falls into that Musical Films category itself. The greater part of the category though is made up of such holiday favourites as USA '94 inspiring WEST SIDE STORY; THE SOUND OF MUSIC, which may be the excuse for one of the best nights out in the theatre that doesn't involve having fun size packets of Buttons thrown at you at the end of the second act but which loses something on the telly; good great GBS adaptation (and much better than the frankly scary Pygmalion) MY FAIR LADY; anything with Gene Kelly in such as ANCHORS AWEIGH, ON THE TOWN (but not XANADU); and what is probably the most recent of the bunch, the entertaining but overlong FIDDLER ON THE ROOFRACK.

Of good quality (and actually watchable) is HIGH SOCIETY whereas GIGI, on the other hand, is rubbish. Lastly is the entry which manages to combine the feat of being the musical which has surely been repeated most over the course of recent scheduling history yet which features the least amount of actual singing, THE KING AND I the mentioning of which does at least give us the excuse to relate the following true story: this bloke went in to a hairdresser's see, and he asked for a Tony Curtis. So the barber cut all his hair off. You berk, said the man, don't you know who Tony Curtis is? The barber said, I should do, I've seen The King and I fourteen times. We know the feeling, mate.

All of the above are at least bearable if only for the fact that amateur operatic companies tend not to stage them in your local theatre right after the pantomime when they hope you will book by mistake, but the next clutch can be justly considered abominable as they are not only oft-seen but also popular. By far the worst offender here is the godforsaken GREASE (starring Mark Curry and Cheryl Baker), the film which it seems is mandatory for both a) girls to love and b) boyfriends to hate. It seems impossible to gather more than two females in a room with any liquid stronger than a Top Deck without them at some point working their way through the shite songs that make up the catalogue of that lamentable crime against man and his musical heritage. Still, the boys get their chance to be just as bad when they feel compelled to get involved in a karaoke end-of-night singalong with the attendant girls to Summer Nights with appropriately `lewd' actions. Groo.

Of the rest of the detestable hordes amongst the worst are, unsurprisingly, the pourings forth of the disturbed mind of Andrew Lloyd `Bo-ots le Chemist' Webber. JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR is the only one of his atrocities that has made it thus far to the big screen, and with little impact we are happy to say, although there is a big- screen version of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA on the way, which can only be a bad thing. EVITA was quite cosmically awful but at least denuded itself of the right to be taken seriously by being one of those ones where *everything* is sung ("IIIIII…am just nipping out… foooooor ten faaaaaags!"). Mind you, there's that version of CATS that crops up on the telly every now and then (thankfully mostly nowadays in clip form) which featured Elaine Paige and Brian Blessed (together at last!) and also John Mills, no doubt wishing it was his hearing that was failing instead of his eyesight.

Also bloody awful is grinning cockney idiot Tommy Steele vehicle HALF A SIXPENCE which employs the terrible convention of presenting song and dance numbers as if they were on stage – with everyone facing and looking and dancing towards the one direction – which annoyed us intensely even as children. Getting a bit controversial now we would also include in this paragraph CABARET which we have never found entertaining, only disturbing, and since it has also provided Alan Cumming with huge success in the US we're *really* struggling to find an excuse to like it. Talking of disturbing musicals there are of the course the two most famous rock operas, TOMMY and THE WALL. The latter wound us up so much as children that we prefer not to think about it whilst the former we just find a bit tiresome. So there you go.

Of course, recently there has been something of a renaissance in musicals, or at least in their popularity since the actual films themselves have been on the whole a sour bunch: CHICAGO was poorly staged bobbins whilst MOULIN ROUGE wasn't a musical at all, just a series of random images run through with some unconnected bad covers of songs. Prior to these there was a brave attempt to revive the genre in the late 80s with British effort BERT RIGBY, YOU'RE A FOOL starring Robert Lindsay. Robert Lindsay? Around that time came also the rather more successful LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS which was actually not that bad and featured Steve `keep your hands off Clouseau' Martin, Bill `the flowers are still standing!' Murray and Rick `smoke `em if you got `em' Moranis. What is particularly gratifying about LSOH is that is has never, at any point, provided anyone with an easy catalogue of what is horribly referred to as `showtunes' (or, if you're American, `showtoons'). The worst offenders in that category – and who have their own special hell – seem to be almost exclusively the products of duos with funny names and include SOUTH PACIFIC, SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS, OKLAHOMA!, CAROUSEL and SHOWBOAT (although the latter two have certain mitigating circumstances in their favour).

All film genres affect those who have an interest in them in a variety of ways. Fans of comedies will bore the arse off others whose interest just isn't quite as important to them with the same lines over and over again in the mistaken belief that this will confer upon them some of that comedy magic they have witnessed on screen (this is bad enough with genuinely great films such as The Rebel, whose epigrams we are not above purloining whilst in our cups ourselves, but who needs a selection from There's Something About Mary or American Bloody Pie?). Horror enthusiasts are less sociable – and slightly smellier – and usually confine outward signs of their inward faith to silly facial hair whilst adepts of the gangster film might just wear Arthur Daley shirts and talk like Mike Reid. None impinge upon the personal space of the wider public overmuch and can be quite properly ignored but there is one demonic, despotic, diabolic and downright crappy genre which exercises a powerful and lasting grip over the poor souls who have tipped into adoration of its dark breed: the musical.

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