Movie Cliche´s - The Singing & Dancing Family Scene

[herringbonekid]

i don't recall ever seeing a film in which the characters burst into song, apart from musicals or the works of Dennis Potter. this is one cliche i've somehow completely missed out on.

 

[Hemingway Jones]

Great googly moogly! I hated her performance... well, the singing anyway. She didn't "sing" so much as "hollered" the song, and I do realize that is exactly what she trying to do, but... Ouch. Hard on the ears.


"RadioHead"

Well, each their own, but I would hardly call it "hollering." It's a lullabye and she sings it softly. It is afterall one of the classics of all time, but enough of that! I see we don't have too many fans of Ms. Day here!

 

[Feraud]

The two examples I can think of don't involve dancing, only singing. Lauren Bacall's "And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine" from "The Big Sleep" was bizarre but enjoyable, and the crew of the Red October breaking into the Soviet national anthem gave me goosebumps.

And speaking of goosebumps, "Casablanca."

Very good Tony! I was just thinking of those very two examples.

 

[Sunny]

As a rule I like musicals, when they're supposed to be musicals. Some songs do get irritating, though.

In What's Up, Doc? we always fast forward the scene with the piano in that room that's under construction. I've never even seen it all the way through. Not only doesn't it add anything to the movie, it's completely out of step with the feel of the rest of it.

My brothers are big Abbott and Costello fans, but they really dislike it when the Andrews Sisters pop up in the earlier movies. I don't really enjoy those, either, and I do like their music! They just don't add anything, and again, the songs don't have much to do with the movie. They show up once in Road to Rio, but they're paired with Bing Crosby and it's a fun song. Plus Bob Hope gets to fake a great trumpet solo in the middle, then sits around making eyes at the girls, unaware his mouthpiece is still stuck to his lips. Completely impossible, but with Bob it's a hoot. Especially for the cornet players in my house. Come to think of it, Dorothy L'Amour sings later in that picture, too. It's an OK song - until Bob's trumpet starts blowing bubbles. lol

 

[Shaul-Ike Cohen]

I think it makes sense to differentiate between

A) music as part of the plot, like in Casablanca or The Man Who Knew Too Much

B) musicals, where the actors basically sing and dance instead of talking from time to time, like in High Society

C) music and concert movies like some Beatles movies, or Stop Making Sense

A subgroup, call it A1 if you like, are movies where the action is more or less stopped for a number, like in To Have and Have Not, or The Big Sleep.

Personally, I accept group A, because it makes sense even if I don't like the music. I can tolerate A1 numbers, I don't like group B, and group C not surprisingly mainly depends on the music (though Stop Making Sense is probably still a great movie even in case the loudspeakers don't work).

 

[Hemingway Jones]

I think it makes sense to differentiate between

A) music as part of the plot, like in Casablanca or The Man Who Knew Too Much

B) musicals, where the actors basically sing and dance instead of talking from time to time, like in High Society

C) music and concert movies like some Beatles movies, or Stop Making Sense

A subgroup, call it A1 if you like, are movies where the action is more or less stopped for a number, like in To Have and Have Not, or The Big Sleep.

Personally, I accept group A, because it makes sense even if I don't like the music. I can tolerate A1 numbers, I don't like group B, and group C not surprisingly mainly depends on the music (though Stop Making Sense is probably still a great movie even in case the loudspeakers don't work).

Shaul, We are in total agreement.
The modern equivalent is even more jarring. Usually, it's a light drama, like "My Best Friend's Wedding," and suddenly everyone bursts into song. Sometimes, background singers appear, dance steps are all in synch. It's bizarre.

Think of "Ferris Bueller." Ferris does Wayne Newton's song that I cannot spell and lack the inclination to look up, then "Shake it Up Baby." There are people dancing in synch on the steps, people are flipping in the air, Realism is entirely suspended until he comes down from the float.

 

[Haversack]

Well, for a bursting into song as a moment of bonding, consider Danny and Peachy at the footbridge where Danny begins singing "The son of man goes forth to war, a kingly crown to gain..." and Peachy takes it up as Danny plummets into the gorge. "...Who follows in his train?" Chills, no?

Tony mentioned _Casablanca_ as an example and it is a good one. A group of German officers begin singing _The Watch on the Rhein_ only to be countered by the rest of the establishment breaking into La Marseille. One thing I noticed about it is that it illustrates something which I and others have noticed over the years which has some bearing on the opinions expressed here. This is, compared to other countries, US Americans do not sing for their own enjoyment in public. (Karaoke is something of a special case and usually requires much prodding/alchohol.).

In other countries I travelled in: )Canada, the UK, Ireleand, the Netherlands, Greece, Germany, and Oz), singing in public does not appear to have the stigma is seems to have here. In these countries I've noted people singing in pubs, gasthause, tavernas, in barracks, on mountain trails, on football pitches, in train vestibules between cars, usw. When I mentioned this once to a fellow US officer, he said that singing is effeminate. I'm curious how this apparent antipathy to singing relates to the common distaste expressed here for singing in movies. Is it because public singing here in the US is not done, it appears unrealistic when it happens in the movies? Or is there amother reason? I know that before the advent of televison, public singing was more acceptable and common here in the US. Consider the sale of sheet music from Tin-Pan-Alley and our wealth of folk song. Thoughts?

Haversack.

 

[Feraud]

Well, for a bursting into song as a moment of bonding, consider Danny and Peachy at the footbridge where Danny begins singing "The son of man goes forth to war, a kingly crown to gain..." and Peachy takes it up as Danny plummets into the gorge. "...Who follows in his train?" Chills, no?

That is the perfect example of an appropriate moment when an actor should break out in song! Bravo, great example!! :eusa_clap :eusa_clap

I do no like singers who are in films and you just know they are waiting to break out into song. :eusa_doh: Whitney Houston (The Bodyguard), Ricky Neslon, Dean Martin (Rio Bravo), etc. What occurs to me is Jennifer Lopez's performance of a singer (Selena) made her career. Not that Lopez can sing..

A great use of singing in a film was Hustle & Flow. I do not think Terrance Howard sang his lines but that was a great film!

 

[The Wolf]

a question for the Loungers

I enjoy musicals but I've noticed they have fallen out of favor in the last decades. People usually say they don't like them because that isn't how people act real life then they mention how great The Matrix or a Schwartzenegger film.:eusa_doh: People in action pictures rarely act as people do in real life.
When a man tells me how much he hates musicals, I have to ask, "Do you like The Blues Brothers? Invariably the answer is yes. It is, technically, a musical.:arated:

Sincerely,
The Wolf

 

[Viola]

I enjoy musicals but I've noticed they have fallen out of favor in the last decades. People usually say they don't like them because that isn't how people act real life then they mention how great The Matrix or a Schwartzenegger film.:eusa_doh: People in action pictures rarely act as people do in real life.
When a man tells me how much he hates musicals, I have to ask, "Do you like The Blues Brothers? Invariably the answer is yes. It is, technically, a musical.:arated:

Sincerely,
The Wolf

And by far my favorite. Heck it would have been my favorite for Stand By Your Man alone.lol

 

[Hemingway Jones]

That is a good topic for another thread. Remember, this thread is about the random shoe-horned scene added to a film to suit a formula.

Usually, a snippet of this scene is used in the preview. Think of the dreaded "Stepmom" with Julia Roberts. The family sings "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" as they bond in the kitchen. This is the sort of cliche´d nonsense we are turning our attention to here.

 

[Lincsong]

Think of "Ferris Bueller." Ferris does Wayne Newton's song that I cannot spell and lack the inclination to look up, then "Shake it Up Baby." There are people dancing in synch on the steps, people are flipping in the air, Realism is entirely suspended until he comes down from the float.

The song is Danke Shenke (spelling) I remember seeing that movie in high school. It was a Friday night and the theater was packed with kids from 4 or 5 high schools. From the start of the movie everyone was making cat calls and yelling jokes like "this guy rocks" "Totally awesome, he's cool" etc. Well, when this particular scene came up and he starts singing "Shake it Up Baby" a couple sections of girls got up on their seats and started dancing on the chairs.lol lol lol It was one of the most live audiences I have ever seen at a movie theater. It was that one time where the movie mirrored reality, or reality mirrored the movie? We were going; "hell, we have to go down to that section"

 

[The Wolf]

Sorry, Hemingway

I segued. Sadly, that is how my conversations go also.
It does seem like the musical number only works in a modern movie if it is as a joke. Like in Monty Python movies.
The sing-along in Wayne's World worked because a lot of us have done it just like that.
If it is done with mock sincerity it certainly does not work. The scenes of a mother and daughter bonding while singing into kitchen utensils falls in that category.
Hopefully, I'm back on topic.

Sincerely,
The Wolf

 

[happyfilmluvguy]

In "The Caddy" with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, they sing, while not actually breaking into song, it's just their routine in the story. There is a point in the film where Dean Martin says to Donna Reed, "I'm going to sing a song for you", and sings it. That was again, not a "break into song" moment. It had to do with the scene more or less.

Modern movie musicals like Chicago and Rent seem to have the same musical number touch, while still staying within the boundaries of the movie, rather than "breaking into song".

In Moulin Rouge, Baz Luhrmann brought a very different perpective of a musical, where, rather than breaking into song, the songs they sang, were their routine, their acts. Scenes like when Ewan McGreggor or Nicole Kidman sang, it fits into the moment, also not technically breaking into song. In the movie, they also switch back and forth between song and dialogue, which is not normally in a musical that I recall, it's singing the song until the end, and then continuing with dialogue until the next song.

 

[Quigley Brown]

The scenes of a mother and daughter bonding while singing into kitchen utensils falls in that category.
Hopefully, I'm back on topic.
Sincerely,
The Wolf

Like Cher and Wynona Ryder singing 'do you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife.....' in 'Mermaids.' I always have to sing along with that.

 

[Senator Jack]

I actually like the musical interlude in golden era films - if the song is great. For example, Bob Hope singing Buttons and Bows in The Paleface.

Back in the golden era, if the film were a comedy or romance, it was nearly a requirement to have a song in there somewhere. You have to remember that Hollywood was still raiding Broadway for ideas back then, and not vice versa as it is today. Till 'Oklahoma' came along, operettas and revues were the standard Broadway productions. Audiences expected some comedy, a pair of star-crossed lovers, a tenor who professes his love, and lots of chorus girls. Berlin, the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, they all tried to include something for everyone in their shows and that spilled into film. Just look at the early Marx Bros films - The Coconuts, Duck Soup, and Horsefeathers, the last which includes (several times) one of my favorite interludes, Everyone Says I Love You.

The studio, of course, also stood to generate quite a bit of income through music publishing if the film spawned a hit song. Look at the sales of White Christmas, both in recording an sheet music. Back then, nearly everyone had a joanna in the living room, with the bench filled with the latest hit songs. The studio needed to cash in on that, and I'm sure there were more than a few directors who fought the inclusion of a musical interlude in their film. I suppose today's equivalent is the rock/rap musical soundtrack. There's some studio exec that cuts a deal with RCA, Warner, etc, and the next thing a director finds is that has to somehow shove these terrible songs into his film.

But the real problem with contemporary film is that there seems to be no one in Hollywood who knows how to create an interlude without turning it into succotash. They just don't understand how it's supposed to fit into the film, probably because these young directors never watched any golden era film when they were kids. And the second problem is that there are so few all-around entertainers these days that when they are given a scene like this, they just can't make it work. Yes, embarrassing. I'm embarrassed for them. It's this sort of idiocy that warrants my standard admonition, 'Adults should know better.'

Regards,

Senator Jack

 

[Steve]

What I've alwas disliked more than anything in old films and (television shows) is when the flamboyantly musical protagonist waltzes into a business or something, and the whole building erupts in song and dance. The main example I can think of this, although it's not Golden Era, is the factory scene from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

 

[tallyho]

How about the dance numbers that show up in three of the best indie films, Swingers, Pulp Fiction and Resevoir Dogs?

I saw a sort of stupid movie called "My Big Fat Indie Movie" It makes fun of a buch of indie flicks sort of like Airplane and Naked Gun. One of the jokes they do is one of the charachter says, "isn't it time for the kitchy dance routine to some classic song?" then they all start dancing.

 

[Roger]

A hole in the Head

How about when Sinatra busts out singing;
Just what makes that little old ant, think you can move that rubber tree plant?
Everyone knows an ant can't,,... move a rubber tree plant

but he's got;

HIGH HOPES!

he got;

HIGH HOPES!

 

[Hemingway Jones]

...If it is done with mock sincerity it certainly does not work. The scenes of a mother and daughter bonding while singing into kitchen utensils falls in that category...
The Wolf

Here, here, and that is so true and funny at the same time.

And before; I just wanted to make the distinction that I am not critical of musicals, just of the scenes you have so poignantly described above. lol

I am wondering if the musical interludes in Golden Era films are responsible or partly responsible for "mothers and daughters bonding while singing into kitchen utensils" or if we should blame it all on "The Big Chill?"