West Side Story (2021) Maybe in a different era (or for all we know, maybe an alternate universe), Steven Spielberg's much heralded and praised remake would become a major pop culture event.......and would've packed the multiplexes with sold out shows........
But nope. It bombed......roundly ignored by crowds who passed up WSS to line up for the new "Spiderman".....
That failure in itself quickly turned into a major story. So much so, that as a huge fan of the original film (see our 11/30/21 post), we felt compelled (like everybody else) to offer our own post-mortem on the tanking of what was clearly a labor of love for Spielberg (see our 12/28/21 post)..
In that December post, we could only contemplate the outside factors that led to WSS's demise at the box-office......we'd yet to see new film.
And now we've seen it.
No question, it's a powerfully creative, at times brilliant re-imagining of the material.....and in so many ways, a very different film from Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins' 1961 original.
The major difference - how Spielberg deftly steered WSS away from its stark stylized theatrical roots and brought it into the real world.
In remembering the first film, we pointed out that other than its famous shot-on-the-New York-streets opening, the rest of it existed only the stunning studio sets designed by Boris Levin.
And with few exceptions, the universe of the 1961 WSS featured little of the outside world surrounding the Jets and the Sharks....only the adults forced to interact with them, such as Lt. Shrank, Officer Krupke, Pop the store owner and the clueless church dance supervisor.
Spielberg and screenwriter-playwright Tony Kushner bring the new version very much into the real crowded, chaotic NYC streets, filled with loud New Yorkers cars, stores subways, the bustle of a big city......and Kushner's script forcefully deal with the ever encroaching 'gentrification' of urban neighborhoods.....(only hinted at in the first film's opening dance number, which briefly showed the gangs leaping and dancing amid real piles of rubble - all that was left of buildings demolished to make way for Lincoln Center.)
Our other impressions - while many reviews singled out Ariana Debose and Mike Faist as the scene stealers in the new WSS, this film truly features only one star - Steven Spielberg and his endlessly inventive ways of staging and editing his films. From the sheer energy and creativity poured into the film, you'd think it came from the the 28 year old newcomer who directed "The Sugarland Express", a film brimming with propulsive sequences that glued you to your seat.. He directs WSS with such such live wire enthusiasm, you can tell he's been waiting to make a musical all his life.
And our only quibble - didn't much care for the rushed, overly busy staging of the "Cool" song.......sorry, but that number still stands as infinitely better handled in the Wise-Robbins WSS, where it functioned as the last of the film's spectacular, showstopper dance sequences.
We can only hope that now with the new WSS available to stream and soon on DVD and Blu Ray, it'll finally attract the audience it should've enjoyed in that different era or alternate universe.......basically everybody. 4 stars (****)
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