Newsies

When: 1992, Bale's eighth film

Age: 18

Genre/Director: Musical, "True Life", Family Film; Kenny Ortega, director; music by Alan Menken (of Walt Disney fame)

Kate says this movie was both better and worse than I'd remembered!

I saw this movie when it came out, at least twice. What can I say: Christian Bale was the latest hottie; my roommates and I were young; it's a musical, and we were BYU students.

Setting aside the outrageously sanitized plot, which makes Pollyanna look like an angsty French film, the movie does have a plot. Since it is a musical, it has about 45 minutes of plot to an unending amount of music (irony: I love musicals; I always think they are too long). But still: problem, climax, resolution. These days, a movie that can pull off the latter thoroughly impresses me.

What surprised me the most is that I remembered the songs! Give Alan Menken his dues, he produces memorable music. I was downright astonished that I not only remembered the songs but the words--okay, so maybe I saw the movie more than twice!

And I quite like Riverdance-type choreography. I mean, Newsies is basically Annie on testosterone and quite frankly, I'd rather watch dancing that is more athletic than sappy. If I MUST have children dancing in the streets of New York, at least have them do it while pounding the pavement.

And I like Bill Pullman, even if he can't sing. While You are Sleeping--where Pullman gets to play the romantic lead for once!--has always been one of my favorite movies.

As for Christian Bale--I'll deal first with the character's accent, which makes me grit my teeth. I'm not going to claim that the accent is inaccurate. I don't have an ear for accents for one thing and whenever people start pooh-poohing accents, I always remember Glenn Quinn (who played Doyle on Angel) being criticized for his so-called phony Irish accent. The guy was Irish! The problem was he was too Irish--he had to loop a ton of his dialog to sound more "American."

All that said, I've never been a big fan of authenticity being forced on me through accent. I don't even like reading books where the authors make their characters sound "medieval"--after all, real medieval people wouldn't sound "forsoothly" to each other. Likewise . . . okay, the same doesn't really hold true for New Yorkers; like Londoners, New Yorkers have a range of accents. But I find it distracting, especially since it sounds so belabored coming out of Bale's mouth.

If you ignore the grating accent, however, Bale actually does an excellent job. While Empire of the Sun could be described as a fluke (child actors can often pull off complex characters simply because they are so unself-conscious) and the next two films as passable, Newsies indicates that Bale is actually a good actor.

That still wouldn't have guaranteed his long-term success, of course. The number of popular teen/twenty-year-old actors who last exactly as long as a teen's attention span is . . . too vast to enumerate (Ralph Macchio, anyone?). But the talent was there; Bale was definitely growing into a knowledge of his own abilities to the point where there's a slightly uneven aspect to the film: while almost everyone else is good-natured and happy when called on to be good-natured and happy, Bale behaves in accordance with his character's  background--to the point where I started to think, "Hmm, attachment disorder anyone?" He is entirely consistent, far more than anyone else in the film except David Moscow (of Big fame), with excellent comedic timing.

One problem--with the movie, not Bale: I realize Newsies is a family-friendly feature. I realize that despite the "true life" inspiration, this movie isn't really history. But the ending bugs me. Why can't the poor guy go to Santa Fe? All he's got in New York is a bunch of dysfunctional friends, a family he hardly knows (see attachment disorder above), and a job that pays him absolutely nothing. Geez, GO WEST, YOUNG MAN. It worked for Charles Howard of Seabiscuit fame.

Mike says musicals have never really struck me as very physical films.  Sure, there's dancing, and singing, and the occasional big production number . . . but for some reason I always assumed the hardest part about them was the signing.  In our last review, however, Kate mentioned the physicality of Bale's roles in the last few films.  And I was rather surprised by how true that holds through Newsies.

The role of Jack is actually VERY physical, with fights, some respectable stunts, and some VERY demanding dance numbers.  While I've always loved the film for the music and singing, this is really the first time I've fully appreciated the dancing.  It also has me thinking back to other musicals, and seeing for the first time how demanding many of those dance numbers are.

Bale's performance is actually pretty impressive, as he leads the cast with what may be the most complex performance.  While the other roles are well acted, Bale, and Duvall as Pulitzer, really knock it out of the park.  Especially impressive is Bale's missing native English accent, which is pretty believably covered by his admittedly silly old New York/Brooklyn accent.

The story of the film, while inspired by historical events, has been given the full Disney treatment, falling in with the likes of Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame as shamefully over-sanitized family flicks.  But after seeing the nightmarish mess that was Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd, I don't think sanitation of sad and hard events is a bad thing for a musical.  It seems people really have to look healthy and happy to pull off singing their emotions.

I've discovered that every musical has at least one song I fast forward through (with the Buffy musical, it's "Under Your Spell," Mary Poppins is "Feed the Birds", and Willy Wonka is "Cheer up, Charlie"), but Newsies is my one exception.  While "Santa Fe" definitely fills the same spot as the other songs I mentioned, it's surprisingly tolerable for the emotional song of the film.

The other thing that strikes me is the rather average skill level of the singing across the board.  While all the actors sing better than I, they're all around the same quality of singer, and no one in the cast really stands out above the rest (with the possible exception of Medda, but she's the only character who "sings for real" in the reality of the movie, so she's supposed to be good).  The thing I like about this is that they're all very believable singers . . . I fully believe these are the voices of average everyday people. Not great for an album; awesome for a musical.

Perhaps the only thing missing, for me, is the great big number with all the characters singing different lines and parts over each other.  While I admittedly never understand a single word, it sure does sound nice!

Now, back to the discussion about who in the film is REALLY signing, and who is only singing metaphorically. . . . .