I found that a lot of the film versions of the story written by Charles Dickens had some how become overly cheerful cheesey musical versions of the text. In the case of the 1970's version of the story, named Scrooge, the effects of the musical were life scarring. Not that this 1970's musical version wasn't filled with cheerful songs about Scrooge's misery, but the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come had an extremely frightening scene. Then again I was only 6 when I first watched it. Actually, that scene till terrifies me to this day, despite that the last ghost is a cheap Halloween skeleton in a cloak. If you would like to see the scene I'm talking about, it starts at around 6:00 in the youtube clip, when the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come pushes Scrooge into his own grave (complete with horrible special effects).
It takes a really talented bunch of people to pull of a musical adaption to a novel or book without being cheesy or totally ruining the story. I think that The Muppets Christmas Carol did a good job of using puppets and humor to retell the story, without being so cheesy you want to cry.This movie has just the right amount of puppets and singing, and they kept as close to the story as they can while using puppets, and making the movie enjoyable for kids without insulting adults, and vice versa. They also did a wonderful job coming up with really cheerful songs about Scrooge's miserable life. I really enjoyed this movie, and I think you would too. I'm sure everyone could do with seeing a little bit of puppets in some film adaptions of classic literature.
You should try watching the new Shrek broadway play... I know it is not a book, but the concept is still ridiculous. It may not even be the concept of trying to place a book into a musical, but rather trying to change the story into something else. When we went to go see young Frankenstein,it stayed very close to the idea of the actual movie, they did not try to add more or take out important parts of the original movie. Thats where these creators fail... they need to stop trying to be original with these plays, and keep the stories the same... look at the total awesomeness of The Lion King on Broadway, they kept the story line the same, and made an AMAZING production from it.
ReplyDelete--Ashley Plover