The greatest thing
You’ll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved in return.
Doyce, after raving about it Friday night, brought it over yesterday afternoon and forced us to watch.
Part music video. Part allegory. Part melodrama. Part period piece. Part Buzby Berkeley musical extravaganza. Part Theatre of the Absurd. Part comedy. Part tragedy.
Visually and audibly stunning — in many senses of the word.
Alternately exhilerating and depressing.
Too clever by half.
(The chief conceit — to use contemporary tunes, from The Sound of Music to Like a Virgin, to evoke the emotional and mental connections in the film audience that the appropriate period pieces would not — is breathtaking. And it works.)
An incredible confection that dazzles the eye and overwhelms the palate. And if it doesn’t really fill the stomach or feed the body — well, maybe that’s okay.
There are people I would never recommend this movie to. My folks, to name two, just because I don’t think they’d like it. There are others I’d urge it whole-heartedly on. This movie is all about aesthetic. No value judgment in liking it or not. Like an amazing lobster-ginger-cherry-dill entree, it’s purely a matter of taste, and some will shrink back from it as fast as others devour it.
I’m really glad I saw it. Thanks, Doyce.
I’m glad you liked it. I have tried explaining why I enjoy MR so much to some of my friends, but they can’t relate.
If nothing else, it makes me appreciate Elton John for writing ‘Your Song’ 🙂
It took us a while to decide we had liked it… it was a little too Rocky Horror for me, at first, and it’s definitely one for whom I need to pick the audience to suggest it… but we rented it to see again as soon as it hit the local rental space.