You are a kid, kiddo!

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 51 Films of 2021

#7 : West Side Story

Stunning recreations of the original film’s New York retain the songs and the dancing in a re-telling that will leave you gasping at the verve and panache of Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner.

I told my lovely wife I had to watch this and she said "if you like the original, you'll like this".  Well, I didn't like the original - I thought it was really rather dull.  So what can possibly go wrong here?!?  I'm expecting to be visually impressed, but I'm really not convinced I'm going to need 150 minutes of it...

And yes, 150 minutes was too much for me.  It has its moments - the set pieces are undoubtedly impressive with the ball in the school hall, "America" and "Gee Officer Krupke" all standing out for me.  Overall, I preferred the second half - the story there gave more opportunity for acting (although it was still accompanied by too much singing and dancing for my liking).  And it undoubtedly has a powerful ending.  But it all feels very retro and reverent to the original material and style - there's a LOT of close-up spotlight work going on, which feels very dated.  I guess some people will love the whole thing as a homage, but I'm just not sure I see the point to the whole thing.  You certainly can't fault the vintage sets though - they look lovely (where appropriate) and impressive and I'm intrigued where they filmed them .

Ansel Elgort is fine (but somewhat variable) in his role as Tony, although his appearance was overshadowed by the allegations against him, which is a situation which unfortunately no-one came out of well.  The Hollywood publicity machine closed ranks to protect him but it's hard to know what else they could do in the face of what seem to be unprovable allegations.  I don't know the whole story though (and never will), so it's best I just leave it there, I suspect.

So let's move on to Rachel Zegler, who we can be much more wholeheartedly positive about - she glows in the role and has a lovely voice.  It's an impressive debut and nice to see that the only controversy that attached itself to her was that she wasn't invited to the Oscars - which was a bit of a shocker, but the organisers sensibly rectified this by inviting her to present an award.  Ariana DeBose was also super impressive as Anita with a very sparky performance and she was definitely invited to the Oscars having been nominated as best supporting actress - which she only went and won, being the first queer woman of colour to win in an acting category.  I'd also call out David Alvarez as Bernardo - he portrays the hopeless and pointless machismo of the role well.

It was also nice to see Rita Moreno in there with 60 years in between her two appearances - and whilst reading up on her, I learned a) she's 90 and b) she's an EGOT so I guess she's kept busy enough in the intervening years.

Overall,  I'd say that if you think you'll like this, then you probably will - but I do wonder how many people fall into that category.  I'm not going to call a Steven Spielberg adaptation of a classic musical "bad", but I am comfortable going for "not for me" and "a missed opportunity".  Specifically, it feels like someone (not me, I hasten to add) could quite easily have transplanted the relatively timeless story to a different timeline.  This would have make it significantly different from the original, which wouldn't have me left me thinking "what was the point to that then?". 

#8 - The highest film I'd never heard of
#6 - I liked this, but others "might" not