Bad News

Before Christian Bale was starving himself or growling like an animal for a film role, he did something perhaps even more unconventional -- he sang. This was for the 1992 Disney musical Newsies, about 1890s New York paperboys going on strike.

The movie boasts acting not only from the young Bale, but Robert Duvall, Bill Pullman, and even Ann-Margret. It has a somewhat interesting story that is loosely based on real events. But what it doesn't have -- and this is an absolutely indispensible element for a musical -- is a good score.

I hate to say that, because the songs were written by Alan Menken, of the brilliant Menken/Ashman team that gave us Little Shop of Horrors, The Little Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast. But therein lies much of the problem, I think. Half the team was missing. At this point in time, Howard Ashman was facing serious complications of the AIDS virus, and had bowed out of all work. A different lyricist, Jack Feldman, was brought in as some kind of pinch hitter, and I don't think the pairing worked at all. I think the Disney executives knew it too, because when Ashman sadly died not long after, they brought in Tim Rice to work with Menken to complete Aladdin. (A much more successful pairing.)

Simply put, there's not one memorable song in the entire score. I mean that literally, as I actually sat down to write this review about a week after seeing the movie, and I really can't remember any of it well. I do remember a dearth of good, character-defining solos; nearly every number is an elaborate chorus production with 30+ people in music-video-esque choreography.

The story is occasionally interesting, though all the characters are a bit more like caricatures -- heroically heroic or villainously villainous. It's not a complete disaster, but there's really not much worth seeing here. I rate it a C-.