THE PIRATE - an SDMB musical group review

Ok, so, here’s the SDMB musical group entry for The Pirate.

I am not sure where to start, so I’ll start here. I really liked this film. It’s strange and not really very well executed. From the bit that I have read about it, it was plagued with problems and was a gigantic flop when it first game out, but how can you not love a movie that seems to be actively trying to be a live action musical version of a Looney Tune? I don’t know if anyone else felt that way when they were watching, but everything about it from the vingette structure to the mugging for the camera, to the crazy over the top vase shattering scene, to the final reprise of “Be A Clown” seems to be designed to hit all the same notes as your average Golden Age Bugs Bunny Cartoon. Interestingly, when it wasn’t reminding me of the Looney Tunes, it was reminding me of Shakespeare. Comedey’s like Two Gentelmen of Verona, or a Comedy of Error have a very similar quasi madcap nearly screwball feel to them. And I appreciate trying to update that into the musical form. At the time this came out the American musical was undergoing some changes in terms of what it was capable of, and this movie feels like it was a growing pain. It doesn’t work, but it tries really hard to do something new. And that, coupled with a couple of really terrific dance sequences and the Nicholas Brother (who were astounding), let me forgive the film a lot of its faults.

I took notes while watching The Pirate (yes, I am that much of a nerd), and the sum of my notes tell me that this is not a good movie. It is surprisingly tone deaf, with some scenes falling totally flat in their attempt at pathos, others going too far over the top in their attempt at comedy, very few scenes hit home properly. The acting quality is all over the place and the story has structure and pacing problems up the wazzoo. There were some horrible cliché’s (example: the whole town chanting “No, not Manuella, take anyone but Manuella!” :rolleyes: ) but I think, having seen the whole thing, that these were supposed to be bad. I get the feeling that nearly all of the bad in the film was intentional and I kind of admire that. It’s a miss in a lot of ways but still, I am walking away from it as having enjoyed it.

Let’s take a look at the notes and see what else I noticed, maybe we can talk about some of it.

Did anyone else dig on the artwork in the opening? It looked like it was Bill Pete to me, but I might have misidentified it.

Oh, Technicolor! Did anyone ever make better use of it than Minnelli? The film looks amazing and the color saturation is stunning. I understand why we don’t do three strip anymore, but god there is really nothing that looks quite so good.
Also, apparently (according to IMDB) Judy Garland missed 99 out of something like 135 days of shooting. I can’t imagine that this helped the cohesion of anything and she really did seem to be phoning it in for well over half the film. But when she was on (during Mac the Black for example) she really was fantastic.
Ok, sorry for the disjointed OP, maybe we can get a little bit of talk going on and things will gel a bit more.

I’m glad you liked it, NAF – I actually felt a twinge of guilt when I assigned it to you, because I don’t, really.

Problem one: I’m not a huge fan of Gene Kelly’s. Archive Guy finally got me to realize that it’s possible that he (really consistently) portrayed smug assholes, rather than being one himself, so I don’t dislike him as much as I once did – but I’m not a fan. The problem is, as someone pointed out in one of our Musicals Group threads, is that he went out of his way to make what he was doing look difficult, as opposed to Fred Astaire (whom I adore), who worked just as hard but made it look effortless.

Problem two: I’m not a huge fan of Judy Garland’s (despite the fact that she and I share a first name, which I don’t know why it would make a difference, but it does). She’s so frigging high-strung – and yes, I know the studios not only facilitated but encouraged her drug use (and there’s something else she and I have in common, a propensity towards addiction) – but, Jesus, I don’t want to protect her, I want to tell her to suck it up and deal with it.

Oh, the movie? You want me to respond to the movie? My bad.

Gene Kelly plays a manipulative cad; Judy Garland plays a ninny. :smiley:

It does have a Cole Porter score, but it’s not particularly good Cole Porter. Some of the dancing is good – I do like the Nicholas Brothers number. The art in the opening credits is good – very '50s (er, '40s). (They do mention who the artist is in the opening credits, but I don’t recall offhand who it is.)

Where it fits in with our alleged overall theme for this, men reconsidering their lives: Gene Kelly’s life isn’t fundamentally changed, in that he stayed a traveling performer – he merely gave up his caddish ways and settled down (insofar as he “settled”) with Judy Garland, who threw in her respectable life to travel with him and perform in baggy pants. Don Whatshisface (pirate-turned-mayor) had gone for respectability, looking to Judy Garland to complete that transformation. I don’t know what either of them saw in her, since she was a ninny.

Oh yeah, I forgot all about the theme. Meh, I don’t know that it fits super well. It does in a sort of shoehorned way, but I don’t really care. If you don’t like Gene Kelley this really won’t work for you, due (I think) to Garlands unexpected absense, it’s really almost 100% his show. He is one of my favorite dancers male or female, but that’s me, if you don’t dig him you won’t like this. IMO he made Brigadoon watchable, which is quite a feat when you think about it, and that’s all that needs to be said for his talent. This he didn’t do as good a job with, but really onces I realized that they were actually *trying *to be cartoonish the whole thing changed for me.

Yeah, I think that actually helps quite a bit.

If I had to choose, I’d go for Gene Kelly over Fred Astaire. It’s probably the thighs, which never had a better showcase than The Pirate.

And while this is not my favorite Minnelli by a long, LONG shot, I enjoy it for the visuals, the silliness, and the way it makes me think of Querelle. And Querelle. And Querelle.

Uh, if anybody needs me I’ll be in my bunk . . .

I haven’t seen this movie in a while, and forgot to add in to my Netflix queue so I could watch it for this thrad, so I’m going by older memories for this. I do remember it as being one of the lesser of Gene Kelly’s movies, mostly for the reasons cited above. I read somewhere that Kelly had to fight to get the Nicholas Brothers in it, because the studio felt it would affect sales in the South.

My other memory of it was how much trouble it was getting to see it in the first place. My (late) wife and I are big fans of Kelly’s, but it was hardly ever aired on TV. I happened to see it at Blockbuster one day and grabbed the tape so we could watch it, and made a copy so we could watch it again later. We were so pleased at finally being able to see it - and then a week later one of the cable channels ran it.