MovieChat Forums > There's No Business Like Show Business (1955) Discussion > The musical numbers were excessive

The musical numbers were excessive

posted 10 years ago by FilmKoala
6 replies | jump to latest

They should have cut at least half of the musical numbers from the film, it would have done wonders. As it stands this movie is bloated with a lot of unnecessary scenes, which definitely hurts it. And a lot of it is singing for the sake of singing, they do nothing to advance the plot or characters forward.

It's a shame since the story is decent enough and the characters are well done. The final scene where Tim shows up at the theater is genuinely heartwarming. But all that damn singing just ruins it.

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] FilmKoala 10 years ago

I didn't think they sucked. The only thing that sucked was instead of spending time developing these things they had them break out in song and dance every five minutes.

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"Ram this in your clambake, bitchcakes!"

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] FilmKoala 10 years ago

Forgive me, but are you implying that movies, musicals in particular, don't have good story and character development? Not really sure where you got that idea as it's ridiculous.

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"Ram this in your clambake, bitchcakes!"

[–] dollvalley 10 years ago

Not all musicals tell the story with singing!
This is one of those musicals where the characters are vaudevillians! Have you seen it? It's not The Sound Of Music...
I do agree that there is a lot of singing numbers in this movie, but being a super fan of this movie, I don't mind at all, I love every single one of them.

[–] FilmKoala 10 years ago

Admittedly I'm not really a fan of musicals and I've only seen a few of them that weren't made by Disney, but in terms of live action I always compare this to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes or The Wizard of Oz. The songs in those two films weren't excessive and most of them were plot related. It's the same with the Disney films. By comparison this movie feels bloated because there's just constant singing and most of it is there for the sake of singing and nothing else. I'm just not a huge fan of that method.

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Ram this in your clambake, bitchcakes!