It's a legendary, and unique, stage musical, with an ethereal, non-literal quality that doesn't easily lend itself to the screen. Several film versions were proposed over the years, and it finally fell to Michael Ritchie, who was a Fantasticks fanatic, having loved it ever since seeing it early in its run on Sullivan Street. (I interviewed him at a mixing session for the never-released CD, and he excitedly told me, "I'm gonna bring back the movie musical!" It took CHICAGO to do that.) It's pretty to look at, and bolstered by Jonathan Tunick's big-musical orchestrations, and some of it works just fine. Jean Louisa Kelly's a charming Louisa, not the strongest-voiced, but it's the right voice for the character, Barnard Hughes has some wonderful moments as the old actor, and Joel Grey is a touching dad (Brad Sullivan, his counterpart, gets the character right but has no voice). Jonathon Morris doesn't quite get El Gallo, he's not dashing or authoritative enough, and Joey McIntyre hasn't much chemistry with Kelly. Several of the musical numbers are somewhat truncated, which dilutes their impact, and there's way too much MTV-ish cutting; "Soon It's Gonna Rain" and "They Were You," filmed in the fewest takes, work the best. Jones and Schmidt do some needless rewriting to both libretto and lyrics, and Jones's predilection for magic sometimes gets in the way, there's too much cavorting by the carnival troupe. The visuals are great, and the time period, more specifically 1920-ish than in the stage version, doesn't hurt. Ritchie directs with care and affection, and some of the greatness of the original seeps through. But the literalism of film makes an uncomfortable fit for this piece. It might be the best possible filming of The Fantasticks. It's still preferable onstage.
Review of The Fantasticks
