Monday, April 18, 2011
St. Louis Blues
So I saw "Meet Me In St. Louis" on Saturday. Man, was it boring. And this is coming from a person who actually enjoys boring things. I made it through several volumes of Balzac, but this really put me to the test. I sat through three separate semesters of constitutional law, but Judy Garland warbling on a trolley almost knocked me out. I mean, I understand that musicals are frequently short on plot, but this one had about three events take place in two full hours. I kept hoping for one of the characters to die just to add a little bit of interest. Preferably one of the two annoying child actors. I know they were generally orphans owned by the studio back in that era, but man, that studio could have made better choices. I haven't seen this much mugging and screaming since Seventh Heaven went off the air.
I know that I'm being unkind. I realize that Judy Garland was a national treasure pickled with diet pills and alcohol and that this is one of those films that everyone picks as one of the best ever made, but I am telling you that those people cannot ever have seen it. Some of the songs were all right, but there was so much nothing in between. And the old timey values just killed me. One of the characters declared that "no respectable girl kisses a man before she's engaged," which admittedly does leave room for hand jobs, but those must have ended up on the cutting room floor. New York City was presented as some sort of horrific nightmare (which I sort of agree with) in contrast to the genteel existence offered by St. Louis. Clearly these people never took a third grade field trip to the St. Louis Zoo before it banned Big Johnson t-shirts. Or scanned the national statistics on rickets prevention.
Anyway, I made it all the way through, so I'm cultural now. How many episodes of the Kardashians does that buy me?
So I saw "Meet Me In St. Louis" on Saturday. Man, was it boring. And this is coming from a person who actually enjoys boring things. I made it through several volumes of Balzac, but this really put me to the test. I sat through three separate semesters of constitutional law, but Judy Garland warbling on a trolley almost knocked me out. I mean, I understand that musicals are frequently short on plot, but this one had about three events take place in two full hours. I kept hoping for one of the characters to die just to add a little bit of interest. Preferably one of the two annoying child actors. I know they were generally orphans owned by the studio back in that era, but man, that studio could have made better choices. I haven't seen this much mugging and screaming since Seventh Heaven went off the air.
I know that I'm being unkind. I realize that Judy Garland was a national treasure pickled with diet pills and alcohol and that this is one of those films that everyone picks as one of the best ever made, but I am telling you that those people cannot ever have seen it. Some of the songs were all right, but there was so much nothing in between. And the old timey values just killed me. One of the characters declared that "no respectable girl kisses a man before she's engaged," which admittedly does leave room for hand jobs, but those must have ended up on the cutting room floor. New York City was presented as some sort of horrific nightmare (which I sort of agree with) in contrast to the genteel existence offered by St. Louis. Clearly these people never took a third grade field trip to the St. Louis Zoo before it banned Big Johnson t-shirts. Or scanned the national statistics on rickets prevention.
Anyway, I made it all the way through, so I'm cultural now. How many episodes of the Kardashians does that buy me?
