Premise: A musical
about the Newsies strike on 1899.
Newsies is a
really weird movie in the Disney catalog. These days, any movie Disney releases
fits neatly in some category. Their identity is defined almost to a fault. I
love a lot of the movies, but it's not for their variety. Back in the early 90s
things were much more muddled. The Disney Renaissance was in full swing. Newsies
came out right between Beauty and the Beast landing the rare animated
film Best Picture nomination and Aladdin being the highest grossing
movie of the year*. Disney was flailing throughout the 80s for an idea that
worked. They seemingly didn't know what to do with the success in the 90s and
tried a lot of crazy ideas. Even still, you could look at one of their movies
and say "that's kind of like this one" (Except maybe The Rocketeer).
Newsies isn't really like any of their other movies. I guess you could
argue that it's an attempt to transition their animated musical success to
live-action but that's about it. Maybe they were just determined to make their
own Annie a decade later.
*Some crazy trivia
for you. Aladdin was only the 2nd movie distributed by Disney
to ever be the highest grossing movie of the year in the US. The 1st movie: Three
Men and a Baby!
Like most people
though, I only know of Newsies for one thing: it has a young Christian
Bale singing. That's about all the movie has going for it. The songs are ok.
The choreography of the musical numbers is fine. The story is very Disney-fied.
Something about deus ex-Teddy Roosevelt pushed it too far for me. Show
me this movie when I'm five, like The Mighty Ducks from the same year,
and I'll probably look back on Newsies fondly now. Seeing it for the
first time in my 30s, it's just another anonymous, albeit unique, 90s Disney
movie. It sure is fun to see a young Christian Bale singing though. I wonder if
he went method for this too?
Verdict: Weakly
Don't Recommend
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