Search - Hollywood Singing and Dancing: A Musical History - The 1980s, 1990s & 2000s on DVD

Disappointing Disappointing

Les G. Solomon | NSW, Australia | 08/27/2009

(2 out of 5 stars)

"This series varies enormously according to the years being examined. This one tried to cover too many years and flashes over too many important musicals in favour of (as with the sixties edition) trash flash gimmick movies. It is not a serious examination of the movie musical. It also fails because it shows such very little actual footage from the films. A two second grab from a trailer or a still from a movie reflects nothing.

If you are going to take on such a massive topic, do it properly or dont do it at all. The original doco was better in a way because time wouldnt allow the coverage of the entire musical movie field in one hour and 40 minutes. I felt the idea of these elongated versions would mean more time taken with each generation and decade. Here they fly through three decades and there are only about 3 movies where we get anything close to lengthy sequences (Chicago, Dreamgirls and for some reason the TV Gypsy)One movie that did much to reform the reputation of the movie musical "Little Shop of Horrors"in the nineties, only gets a flash of a poster !!!!!!!!! Not good enough guys. Also there is no attempt to examine the damage done by two walloping movie musical flops of the eighties namely the first "Annie" and "A Chorus Line" (at least one major criticism of that awful film is featured). Dont expect much and you might enjoy it."