The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
 Wednesday, January 19, 2022 — 5


 
 
 
 
 


 
 
 
 


 
 
 
 


 






 
 
 
 
 

Several months ago, my answer seemed 

to be “no.”

After witnessing the catastrophic fail-

ure of “Dear Evan Hansen” — a film which 
I hated, adapted from a musical I liked (or 
at least used to like. It’s difficult to listen to 
Ben Platt since seeing the movie) — I began 
to wonder whether a musical could go from 
stage to screen without being ruined in the 
process. Thinking about others I had seen, 
I realized with some unease that every 
one I came up with had disappointed me 

somehow. “Evita” awkwardly fits songs 
and story together in a way that detracts 
from any power the film could have had. 
“Les Misérables” adds songs not from the 
original soundtrack. Both “Les Mis” and 
“The Phantom of the Opera” suffer from 
suboptimal singing (“Les Mis” being the far 
worse offender).

These movie musicals feel like they 

aren’t meant to be movies. But they also 
aren’t meant to be musicals. They are 
unable to maintain what made them work 
as musicals while justifying their existence 
as films. It was the adaptation from one 
form to the other where they struggled, 
specifically when it came to suspension of 
disbelief.

If a movie is going to be a musical, this is 

something it must contend with. On stage, 
we don’t think twice when the characters 
start singing. We have already decided 

to believe that the stage is a setting other 
than a stage (excepting, of course, musicals 
where the stage is canonical). We accept 
this just as we accept that the story is being 
told through song.

It’s not the same case with movies. Or at 

least, this acceptance isn’t as easy or auto-
matic. In “Dear Evan Hansen,” when high 
school student Evan (Ben Platt, “Pitch Per-
fect 2”) starts quietly singing at the dinner 
table in response to a question he is asked, 
it feels wrong, especially when the other 
characters continue to speak normally. It 
seems less like he is delivering the story 
through song and more like he is actually 
singing his side of the conversation to these 

people in their dining room. Much of the 
suspension of disbelief is lost in the film 
because Evan sings so much more than the 
rest of the cast.

Despite all his singing, there never 

seems to be a reason why. In musicals, 
when characters start singing in situations 
where people wouldn’t normally sing, it is 
usually because they are expressing some-
thing where words aren’t sufficient. They 
are moved to song, so to speak. But in the 
film, Evan appears to just decide to sing all 
of his thoughts, and when the other char-
acters rarely sing about their arguably more 
complicated feelings, it becomes harder to 
accept this. 

The songs themselves often don’t move 

the story forward because they lack move-
ment in a literal sense. The characters stand 
or sit in a single place while singing or move 
in a way not conducive to the song’s intend-

ed effect; for example, the original impact 
of “If I Could Tell Her,” an alleged love 
song, is lost as we watch Evan awkwardly 
stalk Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever, “Booksmart”) 
around her kitchen island like a serial killer.

I was given hope for movie musicals 

after seeing Steven Spielberg’s (“Ready 
Player One”) “West Side Story” last week. 
Unlike in “Dear Evan Hansen,” the sing-
ing in “West Side Story” doesn’t feel jarring. 
Everyone sings, for a start, and when they 
do so, it moves the story forward. When 
Anita (Ariana DeBose, “Hamilton”), joined 
by an ensemble, sings “America,” we under-
stand not only her struggles and hopes as a 
Puerto Rican immigrant, but the commu-
nity of similar people living in Manhattan. 
The film also makes use of choreography 
— absent in all but one song in “Dear Evan 
Hansen” — letting the audience know that 
they are not meant to take what is happen-
ing literally. 

When Tony (Ansel Elgort, “Baby Driv-

er”) and Maria (Rachel Zegler, debut) sing 
“Tonight,” the impression is that words 
would not have been enough to express 
how much they mean to each other. The 
song acts to persuade the audience that they 
are falling in love despite having just met. 
The musical element, the theatricality, the 
importance of music as something charac-
ters are moved to do when speaking will 
not suffice, is preserved in this movie. In 
“Dear Evan Hansen,” song simply replaces 
dialogue when Evan wants it to. “Dear 
Evan Hansen” brings singing to the screen. 
“West Side Story” brings a musical there.

This idea of bringing the theatrical ele-

ment of musicals to the screen has led to 
the success, or partial success, of other 
movie musicals as well, at least as far as sus-
pension of disbelief. “The Phantom of the 
Opera” and “Cabaret” are set in an opera 
house and (as the title suggests) a cabaret, 
respectively, where singing is a canonical 
part of the story. This makes it more natu-
ral for characters to break into song even 
when they are no longer in a scenario where 
they normally would. “Chicago” makes use 
of this as well, having most of the musical 
numbers take place on an imagined stage 
meant both to show how aspiring celebrity 
Roxie (Renée Zellweger, “Bridget Jones’s 
Baby”) imagines her life as a series of stage 
acts and to comment on the immoral work-
ings of the justice system and its relation to 
the press.

If you’ve seen the trailer for 

Paul Thomas Anderson’s (“Inher-
ent Vice”) latest film “Licorice 
Pizza,” you probably remember a 
brief snippet: two people laying 
nearly shoulder-to-shoulder on a 
waterbed, faces turned towards 
each other, silhouetted hands 
almost touching. It’s a cute, sappy 
little thing.

But in the movie, that scene 

abruptly ends with the girl fall-
ing asleep and the boy trying to 
grope her breast before changing 
his mind. 

I interpreted the moment as 

simply a reflection of his childish-
ness, his horniness. It wasn’t until 
I was talking about the film with 
my girlfriend, days after we’d seen 
it, that I questioned this. 

“What if she was faking being 

asleep?” she asked me. “Like a 
test?”

I wanted to say no, to simplify 

the scene into a transgression of 
a teenage boy, but I couldn’t. I 
wasn’t sure. That lack of certainty 
of the extent to which the two are 
aware of each other, testing each 
other, is the driving force of “Lic-
orice Pizza.” 

The truth of their relationship, 

and of “Licorice Pizza” at large, is 
complicated sometimes. 

Like many of the best Ander-

son films, the plot is nothing 
more than two infinitely interest-
ing characters colliding, finding 
themselves unable to stay away 
from one another and seeing what 
happens.

This formula (or lack thereof) is 

responsible for the tautly roman-
tic, intoxicating atmosphere of 
“Phantom Thread” and the wan-
dering ambiguity of “The Master.” 
In “Licorice Pizza,” it plays out 
in episodes of ’70s tropes woven 
together by the odd companion-
ship between 15-year-old hustler 
Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman, 
debut) and in-her-twenties-and-
still-figuring-shit-out Alana Kane 
(Alana Haim, of the rock trio 
HAIM).

Their relationship is definitely 

romantic despite their gap in age 
and life experience, but is no less 

challenging than other Anderson pairs. 
The two are mutually unsure of their 
place in each other’s lives but simulta-
neously feel more recognized together 
than they do anywhere else in the world. 

It’s precisely in these kinds of odd, 

undefined relationships where the writ-
er-director Anderson thrives; where 
his indiference toward cliché gives his 
characters an unmistakable realism. 
One of the fascinating parts of Gary and 
Alana’s relationship is the way its ambi-
guity makes it more, rather than less, 
palpable to their friends and families. 
Anderson is adamant about peripheral 
characters asking Gary if he is dating 
Alana and vice versa. Their confused 
hesitation in responding embodies the 

kind of tension that gives “Licorice 
Pizza” constant forward momentum, 
even as the plot (often hilariously) 
meanders.

The film certainly has its laughs 

— particularly an episode at prolific 
producer Jon Peters’s house that exists 
simply for Bradley Cooper (“A Star is 
Born”) to clown around in a little mullet. 
Yet the film is more efective as a study 
of two young people coming to terms 
with themselves through each other’s 
eyes than it is as a ’70s LA hangout flick. 
What I can’t stop thinking about, even 
days after my viewing, is the minutiae of 
Gary and Alana’s behavior towards each 
other, how their mutual attraction cata-
lyzes just as much frustration. 

It becomes hard not to adore how 

messy the film feels. Gone are Ander-
son’s 
signature 
frame-within-

a-frame shots: his use of doors, 
windows and other physical con-
straints of his sets to naturally 
zoom in on a scene. Everything 
here feels hazier, less concrete. 

Alana is often shot in reflec-

tions instead, like in the mirror 
along the wall of a restaurant’s 
dining area in a pivotal ending 
scene. This moment is one of the 
highlights of her performance, the 
conversation happening on either 
side of her forcing her to take in 
shocking information, while the 
shot only lets us see a dim, muted 
version of her expression.

The characters themselves are 

messy too, an indication of the 
era and the instability of grow-
ing up. The way the film includes 
the anti-Asian racism, particu-
larly pervasive in its era, paints its 
characters with gritty, sometimes 
uncomfortable depth. Much has 

been written about Jerry Frick 
(John Michael Higgins, “Pitch 
Perfect”), the white owner of a 
Japanese 
restaurant, 
breaking 

into a gross caricature of an Asian 
accent in multiple scenes. I wish 
similar attention was paid to the 
more important characters’ rac-
ist actions too — Gary complete-
ly mistakes Frick’s second wife 
Kimiko (Megumi Anjo) for his 
first wife, Mioko (Yumi Mizui), 
Alana literally bows to Kimiko 
and Gary’s mom writes a rather 
questionable marketing descrip-
tion of this restaurant, referring 
to the waitresses as “dolls.”

There’s something honest in 

this messiness. Anderson wants 
us to soak in all the details of the 
time and place in which he grew 
up, to depict people as who they 
were rather than who an audience 
might want them to be. 

Honesty penetrates “Licorice 

Do good movie musicals even exist?
‘Emily in Paris’ season two has 

improved ‘un petit peu’

Messiness in PTA movies, and why it 

works in ‘Licorice Pizza’

Design by Madison Grosvenor

The image is from the official trailer for “Licorice Pizza,” distributed by MGM.

ERIN EVANS
Daily Arts Writer

ANISH TAMHANEY

Daily Arts Writer

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

I’ll be the first to admit it: “Emily in 

Paris” is one of my favorite TV shows. Ever 
since the first season dropped on Netflix 
in October of 2020, I was hooked. Lily Col-
lins (“Tolkien”), gorgeous shots of France, 
a fun romance? Sign me up. I finished the 
first season’s ten episodes in record time 
and sat around waiting eagerly for season 
two — which dropped right as the Uni-
versity of Michigan went on break for the 
holidays when I’d have plenty of time to 
binge it. The show has improved in a lot 
of ways, but the second season reinforced 
some flaws as well.

“Emily in Paris,” from “Sex and the 

City” creator Darren Star, quickly became 
some of Netflix’s most-watched content, 
though not all of the attention was posi-
tive. Critics and viewers alike hated the 
countless clichés and stereotypes of the 
French. That didn’t change much in sea-
son two, as Emily’s Instagram influencer 
status became even more far-fetched. 
While going viral can happen to anyone 
at any time, the level at which it happens 
to Emily is unrealistic (something which 
users on TikTok are quick to make fun of).

One of the biggest — and most exciting 

— differences between the two seasons is 
that when Emily is not around, the French 
characters actually speak French! Who 
would have thought?

Emily’s sad attempts to practice her 

French continue to be a running joke in 
the first half of the season. In one episode, 
she tries to write Camille (Camille Razat, 
“The Accusation”), the rich Parisian who 
befriends Emily at the start of season one, 
a letter in French as an apology, but when 
read aloud it makes absolutely no sense.

The show finally gave more attention 

to minor characters like Mindy (Ash-
ley Park, “Girls5Eva”), Julien (Samuel 
Arnold, “Antony and Cleopatra”) and Syl-
vie (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, “Call My 
Agent!”). Madeline (Kate Walsh, “Grey’s 
Anatomy”), Emily’s boss in Chicago, has a 
much larger role in the second half of this 
season as well. After a surprise arrival at 
Savoir, the French marketing company 
Emily works for, Madeline uncovers a 
few business practices that the American 
workplace would consider unethical. She 

tries taking control of the French offices 
and conforming them to the style of her 
Chicago firm, only to have Sylvie quit and 
open her own firm, with her employees 
and their highest-paying clients in tow. 
Seeing Sylvie and the others walk away 
was satisfying, even though, for that 
moment in time, Emily’s job seemed up in 
the air.

One of the biggest areas where the 

season fell flat was in the romance 
department. Season one left off with a 
cliffhanger: Emily spent the night with 
Gabriel (Lucas Bravo, “Smart Ass”) before 
he leaves Paris for good, only to find out 
the next morning that he’s staying. Emily 
then got a text from Camille, her friend 
— and Gabriel’s ex-girlfriend (hence the 
need for a letter of apology). Much of the 
promotion for season two played into that 
“will they/won’t they” romance, only for 
it to appear exclusively at the very begin-
ning and very end. Emily doesn’t want to 
sacrifice her friendship with Camille in 
order to date Gabriel so she tries to stay 
away, only increasing the sexual tension 
that made their relationship so enjoyable 
the first time around. But after Camille 
finds out that they slept together, she 
stops speaking to both of them, and Emily 
suddenly moves on to Alfie (Lucien Lav-
iscount, “Katy Keene”), the handsome 
Brit in her French class. The chemistry 
between Emily and Alfie felt forced and 
was nothing compared to that between 
her and Gabriel. Emily’s relationship with 
Alfie felt like a poor excuse to let Emily 
keep speaking English without feeling 
guilty, too.

Even worse, Camille’s treatment of 

Emily is completely swept under the rug. 
Her reaction to finding out about Emily 
and Gabriel is justifiable, but she does a 
complete 180 with Emily and gets her to 
enter a “no dating Gabriel” pact only to 
take him back herself. There’s no explana-
tion as to why Camille goes behind Emily’s 
back like this (beyond Camille’s mother 
cryptically suggesting it), and after Emily 
discovers they have gotten back together, 
there isn’t any kind of confrontation. Sea-
son two ends on a similar cliffhanger to 
season one: Emily’s future with Gabriel is 
up in the air, and this time she’s the one 
who might not be staying in Paris. 

HANNAH CARAPELLOTTI

Daily Arts Writer

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

