Pittsburgh

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A pseudo-documentary about Jeff Goldblum starring in The Music Man in Pittsburgh.

What on earth is it about The Music Man that makes people think they can do it? First Matthew Broderick in a truly awful tv production…now this.

This is not ACTUALLY The Music Man. This is supposedly a mockumentary in the vein of Chris Guest’s brilliant and acerbic parodies of icons of modern culture. The story is, Goldblum (50) gets a hot new girlfriend/fiancee (23) and, since she is Canadian, a singer and dancer, and her visa is about to expire, rather than marrying hastily he comes up with the idea of them both being in a CLO production of the Music Man in Pittsburgh, Goldblum’s home town. He drags Illeana Douglas (a fav of Mr. Otter’s) and Ed Begley Jr into this scheme, and the singer Moby is in the story as well.

Okay. So we see all the buildup, problems, conversations, rehearsals, and bits of the finished musical…and that’s it.

Now, please tell me if I’m wrong…but isn’t the point of a mockumentary to, well, MOCK something? this was kind of dull, there were some mildly amusing scenes, there were times people did and said unwise things…but there was nothing acerbic, mocking, parodizing or even very amusing about this movie.

In fact…Mr. Otter and I, after it was finally over, looked at each other and said (after ‘thank god that one is over’) why did they make that movie? There was no real point to it…it didn’t mock or parody anything, it didn’t lead up to a real performance of The Music Man (and truthfully, after seeing Goldblum do bits of the part, we would not be rushing to put it on the dvd player, nosiree bob)…there seemed to be no reason at all for Goldblum to make this, except maybe if he had always wanted to kind of suck at the part of Harold Hill. Maybe that’s been his ambition, I don’t know…but he didn’t even get to play the part, as far as I know…there is no second disk of the actual show. So they went to all this effort to put on bits and pieces of this show…for nothing, basically.

Now, I really really like Jeff Goldblum. I actually think he’s a Serious Honey, in a kind of dorky sort of way. But in this? he’s just really fussy and annoying. Illeana Douglas was good, but not good enough to carry the rest of them, and ditto for Ed Begley Jr.

Why on earth do people think that they can improve perfection? This thing was so awful that I’m typing this review as we watch the wonderful and perfect and most excellent original, and if anyone will listen to this otter, they will STOP TRYING TO MAKE SECOND RATE COPIES.

Time to go, gotta start singing again and get the bad mojo of that movie off my soul..

Gary Indiana, Gary Indiana, Gary Indiana…

Ah. That’s better.