What is it?
The 1992 American musical comedy-drama movie Newsies.
My Thoughts
I used to see the DVD cover for this when I used to work at my Shelver Assistant job at The BP Library when I shelved the DVDs sometimes, recently my female coworker JB recommended this movie as one of her favorite musicals, and so I decided to watch it.
I have to admit that my review of this movie will probably not do it justice because I was and am currently in a somewhat overwhelmed, distracted, uninspired, can not concentrate so well (mental blocks / walls / barriers), struggling to start or finish or decide on things, avoidance, slightly depressive et cetera mood when I watched it; which is not fair to this movie at all, and that likely impacted my thoughts and feelings and rating toward this movie.
When the opening credits started it looked familiar to me, I then remembered that there was a Disney movie like this from years ago that I possibly saw or I saw part of or at least I saw advertising for in maybe the Disney magazine that they used to mail us back then, and I was correct that this was made by Disney.
I could not remember the rest of the movie even if I had possibly seen it before years ago, so I continued watching it, the beginning made me smile and laugh a bit as it brought back some memories and feelings from the 1990s like from 1992, and it has been years since I have seen a musical.
I then imagined at least one of the reasons that JB probably likes this movie, I could be wrong, but I imagine that it brings her a sense of happiness / joy / nostalgia et cetera.
There is something about people randomly bursting into song and dance that can brighten your day I guess.
I watched the first 10 or 15 minutes the first day, then I watched another 10 or 15 minutes a second day, and then I finally watched the rest of it a third day.
I did not like this movie as much as I had expected and it did not connect with me as much as I had expected overall, I did not like how some of the dancing did not seem to fit and was too flamboyant for those characters in my opinion, and I did not like how some of the musical parts did not fit as well and a few of the songs were not as good as expected.
I did like the more sad musical parts and some of the happy ones, it was interesting seeing a young Christian Bale in a movie and doing an American accent like that (I think that a lot of the accents were another thing that I did not like as much), and I think that the film set and costumes were pretty good and made you feel more like you were back in that time period.
Even though it was only a very small part and afterthought of the movie, I do like the little romance scene on the rooftop, I like how innocent it was, and how the main character actually showed some vulnerability and honesty and a bit of shyness while still being smooth in his approach.
I liked the movie parts better than the musical parts overall, especially after the arrest of the main character when things got more serious, I wish that the musical parts and movie parts would have fit together better and had dancing that matched the characters and their time period better; that, a few song improvements, and more female characters & diversity would have made this an even better movie in my opinion.
I was impressed with how well this holds up though, the production values were higher than you would think for something like this from 1992 and is more classic, and it is amazing how they had so many kids in scenes doing all of that choreography; I can only imagine how much work and effort went into some of those scenes.
The large cast crowded together, especially at the end, was impressive, but I also viewed it differently now that we are still in the COVID-19 pandemic; it was different seeing so many people packed together like that now-a-days.
While it did not connect with me as much as expected, it had some bright spots and it holds up more like a classic, it still managed to at least score a higher than average score like all of JB’s recommendations so far, which is impressive, and I would rate it a 5.5 or 6 out of 10.
Now I still have several more movies to watch that JB recommended like Seven Brides For Seven Brothers and Hello, Dolly!, speaking of musicals, I wonder if she has seen Fiddler On The Roof which I saw once back in high school in maybe a Fine Arts class?
I do not remember that much of it but I do remember liking this scene and song (If I Were A Rich Man, which I still have in my music collection) especially:
The end,
-John Jr
John Jr's Blog 