Bryce Zabel's MOVIE SMACKDOWN!

Australia (2008) -vs- Moulin Rouge! (2001)

Baz at Work

Posted from South Australia

The Smackdown.  Australia is a continent, my country, a state of mind and now, finally, a movie.  To get the silver-screen version made, they gave one of the most visually stylish directors working today more money than he'd ever had for a film before and let him make an epic film about love, war and imperial indifference.  A few years ago, that same director was given license to pilfer some of the worlds' great songwriting talent and shoehorn it into a Aussie-made Bollywood musical.  The view from Australia (the country) is that the duo of "Moulin Rouge!" and "Australia" represents the finest of our country's local talent, both in front of, and behind, the cameras.  Our Smackdown pits director Baz Luhrmann against himself to see which of his passion projects is superior.  The mythical, intimate-while-still-epic "Moulin Rouge!", or the historical, epic-while-still-intimate widescreen adventure of the Outback, "Australia"?

The Challenger.  Dogged by production problems (From Russell Crowe bowing out of the lead role several months into planning, to a major set flooding in a once-in-50-years flood!) "Australia" as a film is the newest contender for a nations pride. It tells of a young British woman's discovery of our great country, of a passion she never thought she'd feel again, and a sense of belonging that, while certainly expected, is still revelatory in the execution. Baz Luhrmann's epic, widescreen drama/adventure film, which, with an estimated budget of around $AU130m, is among our more expensive cinematic efforts, and tells of a burgeoning country beset by impending war, imperialist ethics and a raw, pulsating heartbeat that tantalizes the soul: this, dear reader, is "Australia" the movie. In a move destined to be critiqued until the cows come home, Luhrmann has taken our national brand name and somehow injected it into a film that's as broad and sweeping as the country it's named after. With Nicole Kidman (Kiss Of Death Kidman she's often referred to around these parts...) and a buffed (and bronzed) Hugh Jackman, as well as a veritable smorgasbord of Australian local talent, "Australia" is, apparently, "Baz Luhrmann's Aussie version of Gone With The Wind". I paraphrase the man himself in saying that.

High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008) -vs- The Godfather: Part III (1990)

Third One's The Charm(er)

The Smackdown. Sequels rarely top the original. Some are downright soul-scarringly wretched. Most leave the viewer vaguely aware that they've had their pockets picked by a large corporation's greedy stab at recapturing movie magic by revisiting a lucrative well once or twice too often. Then there are the sacred franchises - all those Jedi knights and boy wizards and hobbits and pirates standing tall as lighthouses, inspiring a thousand ill-conceived sequels. Legions of diehard fans can't get enough of these perennial box office champions, marking their calendars for the next installments and collecting tiny plastic effigies, posters, and other placeholders to tide them over in the meanwhile. Merchandising provides another kind of sequel; Disney, the empire built by a shirtless rodent, knows best how to milk a cash cow.

So now, dancing blithely into the theaters comes the third entry in a mega-successful Disney Channel telemovie franchise, this time direct not to video but direct to the even-bigger screen. Worthy of the upgrade or no, the multiplexes will be packed with squealing teenyboppers.

Coppola didn't disappoint with his "Godfather Part II". Hardly. More than a decade later, he sailed once more into the breech, trying to recapture lightning in a bottle, a complicated story in hand and much (but sadly not all) of his creative team intact. Too old for wizards and hobbits, we Godfather groupies waved bon voyage from the shore and waited, fingers crossed, to see if his third trip would prove worthy of the family.

So. It's Gangsters versus Grads. If part two's for the company, is part three the charm?

Mamma Mia! (2008) -vs- Hairspray (2007)

Dancing Queens

The Smackdown.  If you want to face a little music besides the superhero and comic-based releases that dominate the summer hoopla like "The Dark Knight," "Iron Man," "Hancock" and "Hell Boy II," we've got a couple that just might sing to you. Hitting some high notes of its own among these summer blockbusters has been the musical "Mamma Mia!" still showing surprising strength. This homage to the music of the pop group ABBA earned $175 million in its first two weeks. No musical has ever opened this strongly.

"Chicago," "Dreamgirls," "Sweeney Todd," and even "The Producers" gave new vitality to the form. "Mamma Mia!" offers the most recent evidence of resurgent strength. Perhaps most amazing, I heard the audience singing along with several of the tunes. It sets up a melodic Smackdown!: How does the sight of Meryl Streep singing and dancing stack up against last year's bona fide musical hit, "Hairspray?" 

The Challenger. "Mamma Mia!" has Sophie Sheridan getting married in the rundown hotel operated by her mother Donna (Streep) on a small Greek island. Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) wants to find the mysterious father she never met and Donna's old diary gives Sophie a chance to play detective. She finds references to three special men, and Sophie invites all three to the wedding with the idea she'll learn which one (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard) is dear old dad. Mom knows nothing about this, and neither do the men. Adding to the confusion is a frisky pair of Donna's girlfriends (Christine Baranski, Julie Walters) who raise the general anxiety level. Characters advance the dramatic conflict by breaking into song. All Abba, all movie long. Eventually, the parental identities are sorted out at the alter, although the wedding ceremony plays out differently than originally planned. Phyllida Lloyd directed Catherine Johnson's script adapted from her stage play.

Mamma Mia! (2008) -vs- The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)

They Sing, They Dance...

The Smackdown.  How many ABBA movies do we really need? What is it about the innocuous, infectious Swedish pop music from the seventies that inspires filmmakers and filmgoers alike? The latest entry is this summer's "Mamma Mia!" but back when Bill Clinton was wrestling with "Don't ask, Don't Tell" we got the film that didn't wait to be asked and told anyway, "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert."  Both films let ABBA provide the irritatingly familiar soundtrack of choice for much romantic confusion in exotic locations.

No one ever really hears ABBA and thinks, "That was my favorite song." The key to the use of this music in these films is that it plunges us into a slightly distant past, a past without iPods and headphones, a collective and strangely homogenous past when we all shared the soundtrack of our lives. You might have hated ABBA but you couldn't get away from them. Those songs you love to hate are a time machine, a shorthand for the lameness and the badness and the innocence of the seventies. As bad as you might think ABBA songs were, a trip to the multiplex might convince you that lip synced ABBA is probably preferable to ABBA sung by other folks... even super talented world class actor folks. Meryl Streep sings. Terence Stamp lip syncs. Choose carefully.

The Challenger. Mamma Mia! (2008)  Where to begin? The trailer had me so excited for months, anticipating...  Meryl Streep so luminous and just right. The setting so beautiful. The music so hopelessly catchy. Expectations were high, high enough that we braved opening day.  Lining up at the theater, with the testosterone-charged youth there for "The Dark Knight" hugging the opposite wall, I felt palpably middle aged. Scanning the crowds after buying a ticket, it was embarrassing joining the parade of too-ample flesh. A few husbands dragged along silently suffering and looking longingly at the movie line of their truer desire across the lobby, our line was buzzing with estrogen and as-yet undashed hopes, the last gasps of a Hillary rally. And then it began. The slightly opened-up film version of the long-running stage show features a barely-there plot about a wedding and a search for paternity and reunion. Donna (Meryl Streep) operates a dilapidated hotel on an idyllic Greek island; her finances are tight but not so tight that she doesn't command a seemingly endless staff of island natives to do every menial task (without apparent renumeration) including dancing obligingly to every ABBA hit on the soundtrack.  

On the eve of her wedding, daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) makes an intriguing and risky choice. Having grown up on the island with indefinite paternity but every other possible advantage, Sophie secretly invites the three men who loved her mother twenty some-odd years ago, hoping to have her birth father give her away to (borderline unappealing) boyfriend Sky. For the wedding weekend, the hotel is populated with English people and Americans, a real fantasy Greek island where only the chorus is Greek. Pierce Brosnan plays the guy you want Meryl Streep to end up with -- he's straight and he's handsome and he loves her. He loves her so much that he even sings in public even though the look in his eyes while he's singing assures even the most casual viewer that he does indeed know better. Stellan Skarsgard plays the guy you expect to kill Meryl Streep or just about anyone else in a scene with him, adding a certain unintended dramatic tension to just about any line uttered in his presence. (spoiler alert*) 

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) -vs- Sweeney Todd (1982)

 Oven Baked Vengeance Set to Music
Review by Mark Sanchez

The Smackdown. Hand it to filmmaker Tim Burton for audacity. It's career-defining / career-threatening to revamp an acknowledged masterwork like Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. This operatic tale of bloody revenge earned eight Tony awards and a legacy of acclaim after its Broadway debut in 1979. I left the Uris Theatre 28 years ago numb from the soaring score, the spectacle, the blood. It remains a sublime achievement of the world stage. This demon barber has appeared in one form or another for 150 years  --  there's even a Sweeney Todd movie that came out in 1936. The version that became a legend is the Stephen Sondheim / Hugh Wheeler musical adapted from Christopher Bond's play. This stage production was taped in 1982 and is readily available on DVD.

Several recent efforts to translate this material on film fell apart. Now Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands, Batman, Beetlejuice, Ed Wood) steps up with Johnny Depp in the title role. It's a risky project since film and stage have distinct conventions that rarely travel well. And there's the subject matter. Perhaps Tim Burton put it best: "It's not a stage thing. It's a movie. Go for it." Very well. That's the challenge in our Smackdown: Does Sweeney Todd on film meet the standard set by the stage production in this tale of Oven Baked Vengeance Set to Music?

"At last, my arm is complete again --and believe me, Mrs. Lovett, it's gonna get messy around here."
photo: DreamWorks/Paramount/Warner Bros. 

The Challenger. A sailing ship docks in the foggy, dark London of gaslights and workhouses. It discharges Benjamin Barker, plucked from the ocean after being wrongly exiled to Australia for 15 years. He returns to a landscape reeking of filth and decay. Barker wants revenge for the loss of his wife and daughter, Johanna. As Sweeney Todd he'll get it. He directs his rage at his nemesis, Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) after learning  the scoundrel made Johanna his ward. Todd is reacquainted with old haunts and resumes his trade as a barber with the help of the amoral schemer Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter). The blood flows, the bodies drop and Mrs. Lovett bakes Sweeney's victims into her pies. She never tells Sweeney the whole truth and it propels the action toward devastation. In Tim Burton's hand everything is rendered in ghastly scarlet detail.

"Honestly, Mrs. Lovett, I don't think this will turn up on Murder, She Wrote."
photo: RKO Videogroup

The Champion. Sweeney Todd 1982 combines spectacle and economy in a stage production showing London during the Industrial Age. It features a revolving square set that serves as Mrs. Lovett's pie shop, her parlor, and Todd's upstairs shop with that hinged barber chair that slides victims into Mrs. Lovett's prep room. It perfectly suits the dark cynicism of the lyrics and razor play. Every important character  --  especially Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett  and George Hearn as Todd  --  smartly moves the action in word and song. The lighting, staging by Harold Prince and full orchestra make this Sweeney Todd unforgettable. The original production won eight Tony and nine Drama Desk awards; this taped version won three Emmys and four ACE awards. Stage revivals with different performers in 1989 and 2005 earned another two dozen award nominations. By any guise this material drives home the destructive power of lost love, madness and revenge.

The Scorecard. Tim Burton recognized this material demands a different storytelling approach on film. That led to the first difficult creative decision: addition by subtraction. The film Sweeney discards the musical's signature opening number, cuts other songs and trims the text. John Logan wrote the screenplay. After that, who will perform the roles  --  and can they sing? On that score Sweeney Todd 2007 does not disappoint. Johnny Depp looks right as the tortured barber bent on murderous payback. He sings well enough to be credible, and so does Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett. Her acting is strong enough to counteract her excessive eye shadow. Her character is not haunted and too often she looks like a raccoon. The casting is strong: Alan Rickman perfectly reflects the morally corrupt Judge Turpin  --  and he can sing. Timothy Spall is repellently effective as the Judge's pig-faced beadle, Bamford. Sacha Baron Cohen and Edward Sanders shine in minor roles.

None of this would matter without Tim Burton's dark and comic vision. His mobile camera gives visual interest to material appropriate for the stage, but potentially static on the screen. This Sweeney paints a desperate, older London in sepia-tones that sharply contrast the deadlier elements of the story. Once the blood flows the victims die with no comforting distance. This is in your face, on your face. This will seem excessive to some, but it fits the material. Large emotions, irreversible actions on a bright red day.

Sweeney Todd 2007 represents a giant risk on many levels: It restructures a classic work in service to the quirky vision of a highly talented filmmaker. The film faces uncertain prospects for the studios that ponied up the $50 million production costs. Will Sweeney Todd revive the flagging appetite for movie musicals?

Have we seen enough to decide if Sweeney Todd the film succeeds as well as the stage production that inspired it? Yes.