Earlier this week, it was announced that Newsies, that fixture in your VCR when you were 12 (or, uh, your DVD player when you were a freshman in college and discovering that vodka makes you storm out of parties and then nostalgic) will be returning as a play opening a Millburn, New Jersey theater’s 2011 season, baffling some of the minds behind the original film. At first release, it was widely panned by critics, and I’m sure that today, many fans of theater will disagree with this next statement: Newsies is one of the greatest films of all time. Sure, it gets a little draggy toward the end, and sure the romantic subplot seems tacked on, and yes, some of the so-called teenage boys are inappropriately attractive, but the wisdom of Newsies is timeless and unstoppable. What does this film have to teach us? What doesn’t this film have to teach us?
Unions Are Awesome And Intimidatingly Well-Choreographed
This week, Wisconsin legislators fled across state lines to delay a vote that would suppress the voice of public employees’ unions while thousands of teachers called in sick and descended upon the state capitol in Madison to voice their opposition to Governor Scott Walker’s proposed policies. A relative of mine, who is an administrator at a Wisconsin public high school, informed me that all of the teachers who called in sick at her school had doctors’ notes and had the sick days to use and thus there was nothing that her administration could or would do. It was some good old fashioned cheesehead style cage-rattling, workers asserting their opposition to the threat of being pushed to consent to terms to which they did not agree. It was enough to make me want to run to my nearest going-bankrupt Borders and grab a DVD of Disney’s quintessentially underappreciated musical masterpiece Newsies and cry little salty tears of cheesehead solidarity while I watched these ragtag youngsters take on Pulitzer and Hearst. Go, newsies! Go, teachers! I bet the dancing was fabulous!
Even Batman Had An Awkward Phase
One supernova in the galaxy of brilliant shining moments in this film is the presence of eighteen-year-old Christian Bale earnestly flailing around and not being able to put his tongue all the way back in his mouth. He sings about dreams and dresses like an aging modern-day hipster and tries too hard to sound like he’s from New York and is sometimes a little cringingly adolescent. Oh god, is he trying to look cool while smoking? Oh, god, is he antagonizing dudes in fedoras? Oh god, is he stealing a horse? Oh, teenagers: remember when you see that one eye is closed in your first driver’s license picture that once Christian Bale was in a musical wherein he wore a red neckerchief.
Brooklyn Is A Strange Land Full Of Tough Talkers With Slingshot Skills
This has been my exact experience visiting Brooklyn. Vaguely dangerous people shooting slingshots at things and smoking cigars while wearing bowler hats. Irish music constantly plays in the background. No, you don’t want to mess with Brooklyn.
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