Are you a fan of movie musicals? Did you argue over our slighting of more tried and true musicals when we published the CB Top 5 Adapted Movie Musicals? Well, MGM just might have the set for you. They’re releasing a second volume of their “American Movie Musicals” Collection on October 9th, full of singing, dancing, and nudity, for your viewing pleasure.
The set includes one of my favorite movie musicals, A Chorus Line, starring Michael Douglas in a look behind the scenes at the life of professional dancers. Best known for its headlining song, “One,” the show is full of some great choreographed moments and one of the best tongue in cheek songs, “Tits & Ass.”
As I mentioned above, there is nudity, so we must be talking about Hair, the story of the hippie culture during the Vietnam War. Milos Forman brought the musical to cinematic life with numbers like “The Age of Aquarius” and the title song, “Hair.”
Finally… well, that’s where the set peters out thematically. Two musicals must have been all MGM had left after Volume 1, so they included Kevin Kline’s De-Lovely as the third selection. The movie stars Kline in a biography of Cole Porter and was critically acclaimed, but technically it isn’t a musical – at least not in the same spirit as A Chorus Line or Hair, as modern musicians present their renditions of Porter’s classic tunes. It’s a great film, but it doesn’t really belong in this set, does it?
To give MGM some credit, however, the set includes remastered versions of the movies and is being sold at a relatively reasonable price (SRP: $29.98). I just wish they had three actual musicals to put together instead of two movie adaptations and a bit of a twist as the third pic.
