SweetGal
11-25-2010, 10:27 AM
It is a prestigious British newspaper and it has given the movie 3/5 stars. The review is actually kind of bad/mixed so I'm surprised its rating is good but whatever!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/nov/25/burlesque-film-review
Like the dancers on Sunset Boulevard, Burlesque knuckles down, scrubs up, and makes the goddamn best of things
What do Cher and Christina Aguilera share, other than top billing in this double diva musical? Foghorn vocals, for a start: a large part of Burlesque sounds like whales stuck in traffic. Immobile faces, also: Cher's has been sanded into death mask perfection, while Aguilera's seems simply glazed with vacuity, frozen in a semi-pout, half-human, half-dolly, unshakably impassive beneath a permanently sunlit bouffant.
But what Burlesque highlights is the differences between them: Cher can act, while Aguilera, making a belated move from pop to cinema (she's 29), has neither the knack nor the charisma to compensate. There's a knock-on effect in the dignity department, too – Cher, 64, in crotch-skimming leotard, somehow hangs onto hers, while Aguilera's cheery thrusting merely frightens. The saving grace of Steve Antin's film is that, like the dancers in the ailing club at the centre of the film, it just knuckles down, scrubs up, and makes the goddamn best of things. Which may or may not involve the sabotage of its leading lady.
Aguilera plays Ali, a small-town girl with a big heart and dreams to match. The first scene shows her slaving away in Dwight's diner, Nowheresville, then, after closing time, dropping the blinds, hopping on a table and belting out a tune. It's a shame this comes so early – the big reveal when she later wows the crowd would be stronger if we hadn't been so recently assaulted by those killer pipes.
Ali, who has no family and appears ominously friendless, moves to LA and sets her sights on a burlesque club on Sunset Boulevard, all bright lights and big tassels and Alan Cumming on the door (he later takes to the stage with two contortionists and a banana). It's managed by world-weary songstress Tess (Cher) and camp seamstress Sean (Stanley Tucci, reprising his role from The Devil Wears Prada, with tie switched for a feather boa). Ali starts off waitressing but it's not long before her star is born and the club looks like it might not need to accept a buyout offer from an evil property developer.
The key scene comes when a disgruntled dancer complains to Tess that she's been shunted out of the limelight: "I will not be upstaged by some slut with mutant lungs." Cher tuts and pleads long-term loyalty: "Remember all those times I held your hair back as you vomited up everything but your memories."
It's wonderful stuff, not just because the latent cattiness finally bubbles to the surface but because, crucially, it doesn't involve Ali. Rather, it involves her ridicule. Given that she's supposed to be such a lovable heroine, the supporting cast have remarkable licence to roll their eyes whenever she speaks.
And it's this tension that rescues Burlesque – a film cursed with being too competent to be a Showgirls-style guilty pleasure, and too ropey to be really recommendable. Two divas, one stage – you do the maths.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/nov/25/burlesque-film-review
Like the dancers on Sunset Boulevard, Burlesque knuckles down, scrubs up, and makes the goddamn best of things
What do Cher and Christina Aguilera share, other than top billing in this double diva musical? Foghorn vocals, for a start: a large part of Burlesque sounds like whales stuck in traffic. Immobile faces, also: Cher's has been sanded into death mask perfection, while Aguilera's seems simply glazed with vacuity, frozen in a semi-pout, half-human, half-dolly, unshakably impassive beneath a permanently sunlit bouffant.
But what Burlesque highlights is the differences between them: Cher can act, while Aguilera, making a belated move from pop to cinema (she's 29), has neither the knack nor the charisma to compensate. There's a knock-on effect in the dignity department, too – Cher, 64, in crotch-skimming leotard, somehow hangs onto hers, while Aguilera's cheery thrusting merely frightens. The saving grace of Steve Antin's film is that, like the dancers in the ailing club at the centre of the film, it just knuckles down, scrubs up, and makes the goddamn best of things. Which may or may not involve the sabotage of its leading lady.
Aguilera plays Ali, a small-town girl with a big heart and dreams to match. The first scene shows her slaving away in Dwight's diner, Nowheresville, then, after closing time, dropping the blinds, hopping on a table and belting out a tune. It's a shame this comes so early – the big reveal when she later wows the crowd would be stronger if we hadn't been so recently assaulted by those killer pipes.
Ali, who has no family and appears ominously friendless, moves to LA and sets her sights on a burlesque club on Sunset Boulevard, all bright lights and big tassels and Alan Cumming on the door (he later takes to the stage with two contortionists and a banana). It's managed by world-weary songstress Tess (Cher) and camp seamstress Sean (Stanley Tucci, reprising his role from The Devil Wears Prada, with tie switched for a feather boa). Ali starts off waitressing but it's not long before her star is born and the club looks like it might not need to accept a buyout offer from an evil property developer.
The key scene comes when a disgruntled dancer complains to Tess that she's been shunted out of the limelight: "I will not be upstaged by some slut with mutant lungs." Cher tuts and pleads long-term loyalty: "Remember all those times I held your hair back as you vomited up everything but your memories."
It's wonderful stuff, not just because the latent cattiness finally bubbles to the surface but because, crucially, it doesn't involve Ali. Rather, it involves her ridicule. Given that she's supposed to be such a lovable heroine, the supporting cast have remarkable licence to roll their eyes whenever she speaks.
And it's this tension that rescues Burlesque – a film cursed with being too competent to be a Showgirls-style guilty pleasure, and too ropey to be really recommendable. Two divas, one stage – you do the maths.