fantasticks

It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that Moulin Rouge! (2001) single-handedly saved the Hollywood musical. At the very least, it proved that the genre was still commercially viable, which might be its biggest accomplishment in the long run. But much of the credit for that accomplishment is due to director Baz Luhrmann’s visual and structural re-invention of what a movie musical could be outside the restrictions of its frequent Disney-animated shackles.

Curiously enough, director Michael Ritchie (Fletch, The Bad News Bears) was pursuing his own path towards the same ends six years earlier in 1995, adapting the long-running off-Broadway play The Fantasticks. Yet, unlike the stage production, which stripped everything down to the essentials (including a bare stage and two-man orchestra), Ritchie’s version is more akin to a revival than a re-invention; embracing the sort of grandiose scenery of classics like Oklahoma and shot with an eye that flatters the work of widescreen musical masters like Robert Wise.

Starring Jean Louisa Kelly (the same year she’d sing for her supper in Mr. Holland’s Opus) alongside former “New Kid” Joey McIntyre, the young cast was backed up by Broadway veteran Joel Grey and the relatively unknown Jonathon Morris (who’s unfortunately even more unknown today) as El Gallo, the leader of a travelling circus that pulls into a two-home midwestern town. The parents of our erstwhile lovers, who’ve had a long running phony feud using reverse psychology to push their children together, hire El Gallo to “seal the deal,” abducting Luisa (Kelly) and thereby allowing Matt (McIntyre) to appear the hero during the rescue attempt.

But when the plan becomes public knowledge, the romance fizzles. And soon the couple is lured by the excitement and romance offered by the circus folk and their charismatic leader, who seems to manipulate every situation like an experienced conductor…often perched just over our characters’ naïve heads.

After production was completed on the film in ’95, it tested poorly so poorly with audiences that MGM shelved it for six years, finally releasing a much shorter cut theatrically in 2000, but only when contractual obligations forced their hand. The studio had several such “troubled” productions during this era, but The Fantasticks might be the most interesting of them all.

An undisguised love letter to the Hollywood musicals that came before it, Ritchie’s film offers up beautifully scenic vistas (shot in northern Arizona), clever theatrical tricks and expansive shot compositions that have everything except Julie Andrews spinning atop the Alps. Considering he was working with a fraction of the budget of the films he was inspired by, Ritchie’s visual accomplishment is that much more impressive.

Yet, in the end, The Fantasticks never seems to cohere the way it should. Characters and scenes arrange themselves in the correct order, but with little dramatic impact. Even the songs, often filmed live on-set like the recent Les Miserables, seem somehow restrained by some imaginary cinematic threshold. Much of this is due to the cuts made in post-production, but not all. Ritchie mimics rather than builds upon the films that came before him. And The Fantasticks winds up as a film that seems to have its heart in the right place, just not enough of it to go around.

One can compare for themselves in Twilight Time’s 3000-copy limited edition Blu-ray, which offers a hi-def transfer of the theatrical version and a nice-looking SD version of the 20-minute longer original cut which smoothes a lot of rough edges. Ritchie is also on hand for one of three audio commentaries - the others featuring Jean Louisa Kelly and assorted film historians – along with an isolated score track and essential liner notes by Julie Kirgo.