Lee Eisenberg
Steven Antin's "Burlesque" has a routine plot - small town girl moves to Hollywood, hoping to make it big - and some interesting musical numbers, but overall the movie is hard to recommend. Probably because it makes everything look too easy. I personally thought that Stanley Tucci's character was the most interesting one in the movie, and I also liked Alan Cumming's character. I found the rest of the characters clichéd, and the movie generally seemed like something that I've seen many times on the screen. Your time would be better spent watching something else. Hell, if you're looking for a Cher movie, there's always "Silkwood", "The Witches of Eastwick" and "Tea with Mussolini".PS: Steven Antin played the jock in "The Goonies"
jc-osms
Take a little "Fame", a bit more "Chicago", a little bit more "Dreamgirls" and a lot more "Cabaret", mix them all up, serve cold and hey presto - "Burlesque" a really very clichéd, stereotypical movie musical featuring divas from the past and present in the personae of Cher and Christina Aguilera.You name it, almost every stock character and situation you can think of in this context is worked in and to death, the young, talented wannabe singer, her backstage, bitchy rival, the older Teflon-tough mother-hen club-owner with a heart of gold, her gay, sympathetic, through-thick-and-thin assistant manager, the grasping, super-rich property magnate out to buy out the failing club and the handsome, sympathetic barman who wouldn't you know it, is a gifted songwriter with a long-time, long-distance fiancé who puts up the young singer with predictable results. The story really itself from all of the above in a wholly predictable manner which would be all very well if it was well acted, staged and acted but unfortunately it isn't. Cher's face us so botoxed that she can only just make her lips move to speak, Aguilera tries hard, way too hard, to impress leaving just Stanley Tucci to steal most of his scenes as everyone's shoulder-to-cry-on.Like the aforementioned "Dreamgirls", the songs just aren't strong enough either and fail to lodge themselves in the memory in any way. When Aguilera's boy-friend near the end finally presents her with the big song he's been holding back for her, it's just a formulaic sub-disco effort. Moreover, it's ridiculous for Aguilera to make her big pitch to Cher by pleading to actually sing rather than lip-synch on the club stage, only for her to proceed to lip-synch all her own songs from then on.The production numbers too lack the snap and imagination of "Chicago", never mind anything Bob Fosse ever created, leaving the film a rather empty construct, filled with paper-thin characters and a happy ending constructed, literally out of thin air.This I'm afraid is one cabaret you don't want to come to.
winstonfg
And I say that as an old fart who has never particularly liked Christine Aguilera, or her image or brand of pop (am I getting old?).It's not 'Funny Girl' or 'Cabaret', but it's a bit of a mixture of both, with some nice moments for the supporting cast - especially Stanley Tucci, who once again gets to play "the gay" in that interesting, undemonstrative style of his - and not much needed from the leads, who do their jobs as required.And if that sounds like a put-down, it's not meant to be. I enjoyed watching the film - it's just not up there with the ones I mentioned. And the business of it being too "Bob Fosse"-esque? Pah. If you're going to mimic, at least pick the best.My preference would have been for a few more classic lip-synced blues tracks; but at the end of the day, it's a nice story, well told. And it reminded me that, even with all that prodigious female talent on display: It ain't what you got; it's how you use it.
