Newsies | | Cast : | Christian Bale | | Director : | Kenny Ortega | | Studio : | Disney Studios | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | April 10, 1992 | | DVD Released Date : | April 08, 2003 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), English (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 01, 2005 | | Summary | Closest to the old time musicals. | Content
 | Newsies is one of those movies that grows on you, like some of the songs in it. The first time it seemd too corny (a bunch of boys singing, dancing, and behaving like the East Side Kids), but I liked it more with each viewing.
In early 20th century New York, Christian Bale (Batman Begins, Empire of the Sun) leads underpaid paperboys in a musical strike against publishers Pulitzer and Hearst. Bill Pullman (Sleepless in Seattle, Casper) plays a Sun reporter who takes up their cause.
Robert Duvall (To Kill A Mockingbird, Second Hand Lions) gives an interesting interpretation of Pulitzer, and Ann-Margaret (Bye Bye Birdie, Pocketful of Miracles) has a few scenes as a dancing girl. But the best performance, in my opinion, is Kevin Tighe (Emergency, What's Eating Gilbert Grape) as a sinister reformatory warden. He's mastered a patiently mean, calmly austere look that could send chills up your spine.
There are at least a couple very memorable songs: King of New York and Seize The Day. The dancing and choreography attempts to rise to the level of classic movie musicals like Singin' In The Rain, doesn't quite reach that quality, but they've made a noble effort that's entertaining in most of the numbers.
On the whole the movie can be quite effective if you can get past the corniness and get into it. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 20, 2005 | | Summary | Timeless Musical Classic | Content
| I first saw this movie a good few years ago and enjoied it emensely. I found the acting to be top rate, the music inspiring and the dance sequences amazing.
Having recently purchased the DVD and being a good few years older I still find this to be one of my favourite films of all time.
It's one of only a few films where the songs and scenes have staid with me.
While the story may not be completely historically accurate it has all the elements of a good story. Strong characters, a great conflict, defining moments and the age old feel good factor.
Watching Christian Bale - now the new and improved Batman - in his younger roles shows how much potential he has always had and how good an actor he is.
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| Rating | | | Date | July 16, 2005 | | Summary | GREAT AND ENTERTAINING!!! | Content
| I thought I would be bored of this movie when I saw the trailers for it back in 1990-something. But when I actually saw it on video, I kicked myself for not seeing it on the big screen. I enjoyed it a lot and found it to be very entertaining, not to mention educational. I definitely learned something from it. This is one film I can sit through and watch over and over again. The songs and dance routines are catchy and the storyline is great. You don't find movies like this nowadays. I highly recommend this film. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 29, 2005 | | Summary | A really good script is how you sell movies | Content
| I wanted to love this movie. Beyond that, I wanted it to be an instant classic, albeit thirteen years after it's initial release.
In 1996 I was a sheet music seller. Through 2003, that vocation supported my family. In that time, I must have sold more copies of the songbook, "Newsies", than any other collection on the shelves. I've oft wondered why but was never compelled to actually watch the film.
I'm not sure why. Max Casella, (Racetrack) second banana to Doogie Howser was immediately recognizable. A barely legal Christian Bale, who I thought was an utterly brilliant 'one shot wonder' in Steven Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun" was certainly a draw.
So, what did it take to turn the proverbial corner and actually watch this film? Of all things, the reincarnation of the original vision of Frank Miller's, "Batman".
How utterly shallow of me. Or, am I?
Watching a 90s musical based on the performance of an actor years later is contrived at best though I'm glad I did. However, and here comes the rub...I did not like this picture.
This is a film about potential. It would be a fascinating exercise to have a round table discussion with the top "A"-list directors of today tossing about ideas how to tell this story. Imagine: Lucas, Cameron, Howard, Jackson, Coppola, Burton, Scott, all around a storyboard filled wall arguing how to make this script compelling. What an opportunity!
So, where does the execution fall flat? Certainly not the treatment itself. What a great premise: "Oppressed newsboys seek justice by way of righteous indignation in the late 19th century." There could have been a trailer with nothing but those very words scrawled across the screen with dramatic music punching a deep baritone's voiceover and that would have gotten my attention.
But in 1991 the idea was not only incubated, but boiled to the point where there was no flavor left. Character development was neutered. Blasphemy? Perhaps, especially if a thirteen year-old girl happens to be reading this.
I must give due credit to Alan Menkin for a fabulous score. I'm not savvy enough to know who is responsible for allowing the underscore to dominate the performances. The actors' interpretations of the script were nearly always completely derailed by a swell of strings or a thrum of percussion. The soundtrack, even in a musical, should support the story, not overwhelm it.
This is no more tragic than when two brilliant actors are on a small soundstage opposite each other. Namely, Robert Duvall and Christian Bale. These two appear briefly together in the third act of the film in a wonderfully contentious moment, nearly ruined by abrasive music. Silence, would have been golden.
As I do, most people universally praise Duvall's presence in film, and it is no less palpable in Newsies. Unlike some reviewers, I thought his performance lent credibility to the film and a dramatic base from which to work. The filmmakers did not exploit this advantage. With the benefit of hindsight, nor did they Christian Bale.
Here is an actor who has by and large flown completely under the radar of the mass public, save a brief, and brilliant shining moment as a thirteen year-old actor five years prior. Not until many years later do I come to realize how bred in him is his acting prowess. There is no scared little boy here, no brooding hell-bent on vengeance soon-to-be hero. Only a loose protagonist with a threadbare script with which he must attempt near miracles.
Had I but seen this film when it was released, perhaps I would have seen this spark at the time. No longer will I so readily dismiss a child actor's performance (as I did again with Anna Paquin after her turn in "The Piano").
I'm certainly preaching to the choir now as I say that Bale has a prodigious gift whom amongst a small cache of actors we will be seeing for many years to come.
There are other annoyances:
Exactly what accent is Duvall supposed to have? Clearly some of his dialogue was looped but someone forgot to tell him where the border between Germany and Texas is.
The orchestra and choral mix sound as though they're in an acoustically padded box. This may be more a complaint about the final mixing technique of the day, but neither Beauty and the Beast nor Aladdin suffer from this stifling lack of musical life.
The choreography is sometimes derivative. Watch the Lament (Lonesome Polecat) or Raising the Barn numbers from "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" and see what I mean.
Lastly, the editing. Oh, how I long for those days when talented dancers performed in front of a locked down camera and we were in complete awe of the performance. As with so many movies made in the last two decades, the more the camera becomes free, the less we are able to see the performance. Editing should not draw attention to itself. If it does, as is so here, then there are problems with either the performances or with how the film was shot.
All that said, Newsies has an upbeat score, an underdog theme, and really cute boys, which will always make it a five-star hit...if but with a demographic that won't be able to vote for awhile.
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| Rating | | | Date | June 29, 2005 | | Summary | Musical! Musical! Read All About It! | Content
| If audiences had any smarts, the English-born Christian Bale would be a major star. He already is a major actor. He's certainly one of the hardest-working in motion pictures.
From his childhood debut in Steven Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun" to adult roles in "The Machinist" (for which he lost 63 pounds), "Batman Begins" and the upcoming "Chronicles of Narnia," Bale excells in films as varied as "Little Women" (you can see heartbreak on his face), the gaudy "Velvet Goldmine," and the darkly satiric "American Psycho" (now in two-disc DVD rerelease).
Nothing seems beyond his reach. In "Newsies," Bale carries on his teenage shoulders a sizeable production about a true life labor dispute. Walt Disney has tricked it out, however, as a period musical in which the buoyant young cast gets the New York accents exactly right and the actor's singing and dancing are good enough to give MGM pause.
Well, almost a musical. It's part song-and-dance, part send-up of newspaper tycoon Joseph Pulitzer (Robert Duvall), and partly an expose of child labor at a time when Bale gets New York's newsboys to strike. If "Newsies" had kept to just one story, it might have been a better movie. Instead it is merely an entertaining one with long non-musical waits. Still, the big numbers in which the newsboys dance through the dusty city streets are spectacular.
Bale, in almost every scene and fully up to the new musical demands, is the film's driving force. Yet his name is nowhere on the cover of this DVD nor in any of the descriptive material save for a small back cover credits listing. Duvall is heralded, of course, and Ann-Margret, who has three brief scenes. But don't let the slight spoil the fun. "Newsies" has an authentic look, lively choreography, and a likeable lead in the handsome young Bale. Hey, this kid's got talent. He's gonna go far. |
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