So great on so many fronts. Singing, dancing, originality, humour, sadness...anything less than 8.5 is a disgrace.
BTW...how is it that Russ Tamblyn was not in more movies? He was awesome in this.
"Paging George Kaplan..."
Always interesting to enter the board of this or that movie sometimes considered a classic by some. There's always at least one thread like this, stating how shocking and appalling it is that the rest of the world doesn't love said entity as much as the thread starter.
I saw this recently and I gave it a six. Yes, the jazzy soundtrack left me unimpressed. Very little stood out, other than the "America" scene. That was a highlight; glorious, multi-layered and clever as well as a feast for eyes and ears. Other than that, nah. Pluses for giving the Romeo and Juliet story a contemporary, gritty twist but at the same time it was a bit ridiculous how these tough guys kept singing and dancing at each other. Perhaps it just wasn't my cup of tea.
Personally I found musicals like (the Wise-directed as well) Sound of Music and Rock n' Roll Wolf (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076340/) to be far more entertaining with much more memorable music all around. Though I rank WSS as better than Annie (1981) even though I love Hard Knock Life and Tomorrow!
7.7 is quite good a character which (for now, at least) I think reflects this movie quite well. I easily see why many consider it a classic, but I also see weaknesses which at least for me (and many others, obviously) doesn't make it the greatest musical and certainly not the greatest movie of all times. Very good, but not amazing.
Just my two cents.
Don't breathe air. Birds *beep* in it!
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The forced romance and the pretty awful performance from the lead guy really bring it down. Everything else is fantastic about it though. Deserved it's Best Picture win :). Score's about right. Could be a bit higher. Maybe an 8.0 or so.
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Not me, I thought it was a total *beep* awful musical numbers and lousy story.
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To each their own, scorpion-52, but I have to disagree here. Imho, West Side Story is one of the few Broadway musicals that has been really successful, on screen, as well as on stage, and I think that this movie has withstood the test of time beautifully and aged quite gracefully. It's one film that I never, ever get tired of seeing over and over again. I think that West Side Story deserved at least a nine, if not a ten for an imdb.com rating.
shareWatching West Side Story was like watching Kiss in concert.
With a Kiss concert - the music is mediocre at best but the stage sights make it seem like a good concert.
To me the problems with West Side Story was the main romance didn't seem real, the two main characters had weak performances, and the gangs seemed wimpy so there was no fear or danger felt before the killings.
I didn't feel a connect to the characters throughout like I did watching movies that deserve a 9 or a 10. The only connect I felt was in the last 10 minutes (the last scene was a really good scene)
So the movie (as a movie) was mediocre, maybe a 6 only because the songs / dancing carried it.
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Agreed, thee classic amongst cinematic musicals. Problem is, not enough people on IMDB have a clue (age) so it's up to the generation of the Black and White Zenith plier turner to give it it's due props.
I rated it a ten.
"Only a numbskull thinks he knows things about things he knows nothing about."
Everything was good but not the performances, they are so bad, really bad. Wood and Beymer were not good enough. Now I know why Rita Moreno won her Oscar, she is the only worthy performance in this film.
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The problem with West Side Story is that it hasn't aged well. I used to love this movie as a kid but I sort of cringe watching it now. Seeing a bunch of Hell's Kitchen 1960s-era thugs prancing and dancing is as ridiculous as having the Bloods and Crips dancing the ballet. The way some of the songs pranced around censorship is also cringeworthy, like having the kids sing "ever loving" or "mother loving." (Oh, come on...).
Natalie Wood lived up to her namesake. She was wooden in the role, had a horrible accent and spoke bad Spanglish. (What was that line again she says in the third act? "Please no let it be true.") Her casting was offensive and hypocritical, too. Here you have a movie about the evils of prejudice, but the studio didn't think any Latino actress was good enough to play the lead; all the hispanics had to be happy to play the supporting roles.
So I can see the movie being rated as low as it it. I think it's a solid 8.0 but I don't think it deserves much higher than that. The dancing sequences involving the gang members are just too campy and Wooden wasn't the best choice for the role.
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I don't know, atomicgirl24-136281. This:
The problem with West Side Story is that it hasn't aged well.
Agree. It's also the best live musical ever, imho.
Never get tired of this. I used to love the soundtrack and would ask my older sister to play it all the time ... that and her Beatle Albums.
I second this:
Never get tired of this.
@peter_joshua (Original OP)
I agree that a score of 7.6 is an insult to this great movie. When I try to guess as to why, I think of "Gigi." It is rated at only 6.9 on IMDB; yet, I think it is the best movie musical of all time. Looking at the Gigi board, many people did not like it because they thought Maurice Chevalier was a pedophile. Also, many people thought Leslie Caron was a prostitute. So, bearing that in mind, is there anything like that in West Side Story that upsets people. If there are things people hate about this movie and therefore rate it low, I don't know that they might be.