OPINION: The hills are alive with the sound of...

I’m going to be taking a break from going to the theaters for recently-released movies. Not that I dislike the current offerings, but with me in the final stages of saving for a new car, I figure it’s worth it to not rush the process by poking the bear of driving my old, 20-year-old Honda to Des Moines every weekend.

Instead, over the next few weeks, I wanted to explore genres of movies. There’s a few of them, and often reductive by categorizing films into boxes they shouldn’t belong. Yes, a movie like “A Real Pain” is a comedy, but is it on the same wavelength as “Ride Along” or “Ace Ventura”?

Typically, the intended goal of a movie dedicates the genre. For bombastic stunt work, an action film. For witty writing to make you laugh, a comedy. For thoughtful, contemplative character work, dramas. For wetting pants, horror.

For the art of performance, there’s none better for showcasing talent than the musical. Poppy visuals and melodic sounds, full of visual action in choreography and often ridiculously expensive because they were once funding the bankroll of Hollywood. They’re also the most complex to talk about critically, mostly because it’s stretching every sensory activity movies are capable of producing.

Musicals are about performance, so bad musicals will typically diminish the power of raw performance in favor of computer effects or playing a little too much with the medium. I like to point to recent movies like “Dear Evan Hansen” and “Cats” as recent examples of relying on visual effects when performance should be the focus.

There’s a recent trend with Disney’s habit of remaking their classic animated musicals into bloated, grave-robbing live-action remakes which is quite damaging. Remakes like “The Lion King” are so bizarre to see. Here’s a movie attempting to be as realistic in animation as possible, but the animals are singing and dancing (or whatever their form of it is after it’s ground up into computer generated images).

Let’s be honest here. Musicals aren’t meant to be realistic. No one bursts out into song and dance to make their emotions more powerful, besides your most annoying friend. It loops around to the point of performance. If the talent is there, the performance becomes valuable.

Arranging scenes becomes a game of building to the next song number. Performance becomes the height, everything between is downtime. Movies need downtime as contrast. It lets the audience recover from the emotional height of a song number while also anticipating what will happen next. Good musicals know this formula, and it’s been in them for generations.

The song numbers need to be the showy bits of the movie. The last thing you need is to feel like the song numbers are subtle or punishing the audience for viewing them. Take “Spirited,” a Christmas Apple TV movie which is so self-destructive in trying to be an ironic musical that it shoots itself in the foot with self-deprecation. Yes, musicals are showy, and “Spirited” can’t seem to accept that.

Of course, musicals also can’t be overly optimistic all the time. “The Greatest Showman,” despite being a great calling card for Michael Gracey as a musical director, is also a revisionist mess of a movie. Why would a movie about P.T. Barnum, one of the most derogatory human beings who exploited his performers as freak shows, tout him as a fighter for inclusion and diversity?

One more bad example before I give about some good ones. I want to talk about the recent “Emilia Perez,” which devastates me to speak negatively about. A trans story mismanaged like this is heartbreaking for me. But, besides obvious no-nos in the story (a trans person should never Mrs. Doubtfire their way back into their old life like this), it’s also a poorly-made musical.

The performed music lacks any sort of power vocally, with the most famous song, “El Mal,” being a whispered, ugly song. Choreography is noticeably powerful, but songwriting in the lyrics and performance are unmistakably lacking. A scene where a character requests information about a sex change operation is a horrific use of sing-songy vocal performance when a doctor bafflingly sings, “from penis to vagina.”

Anyways, some recent good examples. Everyone knows at this point “Wicked” is one of the best musicals in recent years, but I also want to point to director Jon M. Chu’s other stage adaptation musical with “In the Heights.” Powerful choreography (one pool scene is absolutely stunning) with a toe-tapping soundtrack written by Lin-Manuel Miranda before he broke out with “Hamilton,” it’s a movie many missed due to its pandemic release.

Reinterpretation of existing music can create some amazing effects. Musical biopics like “Rocketman” and “Better Man” do this by using an artist’s discography for recontextualized narrative purpose. Both also include superstardom performances with choreography pieces preferring the fantastical over the realistic, embracing the spectacle because it’s just too cool.

Disney hasn’t been slacking either in the musical department, at least for their original animated flicks. “Moana,” “Encanto” and “The Princess and the Frog” all use unconventional soundtracks for musicals. Because of this, despite their relegation as kids’ movies (one of the reasons why genres don’t always work), they provide originality in barrows.

The revival of the musical might be traced back to 2016 with “La La Land,” which breaks quite a few rules but understands the rawness of a good performance. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone dancing in the twilight is one of the most electric musical moments in years. The ending, which harkens back to the dream sequences of classical Hollywood musicals, is simultaneously heartbreaking and beautiful.

If anything, musicals need to feel like they’re controlling the screen, and feel like a showcase of talent. Excitement can’t be hidden behind computer-generated masks, they need to be loud, visible and proud.