Holiday Hits and Misses: A Review of Susan Boyle’s I Dreamed a Dream and Nine

Posted on December 29th, 2009 under Media Review

Pop culture has given us another object lesson this year in the form of an astronomical success and an anticlimactic flop.  I’m talking about Susan Boyle’s runaway success with the release of her first album, I Dreamed a Dream and the lavish holiday musical dud Nine.

Nine had all the trimmings of a Las Vegas Christmas extravaganza with all the rhinestone studded bells and whistles.  Whatever else can be said about this film, it wasn’t lacking in talent.  Daniel Day-Lewis, Penélope Cruz, Judy Dench, Kate Hudson, Sophia Loren.  These movie legends proved that quality doesn’t come with quantity or even proximity.  Push a bunch of stars on stage in expensive costumes, and you have, well, a bunch of stars on stage in expensive costumes.  You can’t take a fashion show and expect a story to evolve to fill in the space between the acts.  The weak story collapses before your very eyes under the boas, sequins and tiaras.

Just to be clear, the movie does have a plot.  The film stalks a famous director as he works on his next lavish undertaking.  The world idolizes him.  His talent, reputation and mystic make him the ultimate sexual conquest for the film’s many leading ladies, his suffering marriage notwithstanding.  A restless celebrity, a deteriorating marriage and a profusion of alluring women set against the romantic Italian coast.  His professional career and his personal life slide in and out of each other as he tries to find himself, whatever that means.  I think you get the picture.

“Flashy” doesn’t necessarily translate “bad.”  But, you take a story pinned together with strings of mesmerizing choreography and sex, you’ve still only got a more grown up version of Fantasia meets Entertainment Tonight.  Where’s the beef?

The biggest problem is that there is no heart in this movie.  There are no transcendentals: none of the true, the good and the beautiful, even with all the beauties.  I left the theatre thinking, what’s the point?  There wasn’t anything in this film I hadn’t seen before on screen: dancing girls, idolized Hollywood filmmaker and an underdeveloped divorce subplot, just in time for the holiday season.  Even the grandiose cast of stars, one of the film’s redeeming elements, didn’t pull its full weight in salvaging the film because none of the characters received enough time for any significant development.  In short, the film suffered not from want of money, name, fame or glory, but from lack of substance.  Just goes to show the movie can’t manufacture humanity.  This point was made just as strongly by this movie’s failure as it was by Susan Boyle’s runaway success.

My mom got Boyle’s debut album this Christmas.  Since then I’ve listened to it half a dozen times and found in marvelous.  Out of curiosity I looked up Boyle’s audition for Britain’s Got Talent on Youtube.  As of today, that video alone has been viewed more than 82 million times.  That should have given me a clue.

As Boyle walked out onto the stage she was greeted with critical eyes of the audience who saw a forty-something, unemployed woman without any makeup.  The camera captured the sarcastic smirks and prejudice of the audience as Boyle stood on stage as the panel of judges asked her a few preliminary questions.  An audible snicker rippled through the crowd when she said she wanted to be a singer.

The disbelieving judgment was written all over the faces of everyone watching.  Doesn’t she know you have to be sexy to be a singer these days?  Everything changed when she sang the first few bars of I Dreamed a Dream. Since then, she’s become the surprise underdog musician of the year.  Her album has sold more than 2 million copies since November, making it a number one best seller.

Looking back at the last couple of weeks, it is Boyle who is making headlines and turning heads.  People don’t have much to say about Nine.  It fails to offer anything deeply human to audiences.  On the other hand, Susan Boyle challenges the norms of pop culture every time her rich voice carries over the airwaves.  Society likes to be neat. Beautiful people should have beautiful lives.  But every once in a while, someone comes along who doesn’t fit the mold (or the dress).

I think that’s why Boyle’s CD has met the record success.  People want hope.  People identify with imperfection, with the messed up stuff, not the airbrushed idols.  Ultimately, people know about their own imperfection, they know that they can’t be perfect.  When Susan Boyle sings, she proves that your appearance doesn’t dictate who you are.  Life isn’t as neat as Hollywood likes us to believe, nor is it as simple.  Not all that glitters is gold, not all who wander are lost.

//

1 Comments

• 

  Rebekah says on March 24th, 2010

  Thanks for the message. As someone who likes a good movie/book/song when I run across it, it is encouraging to know that quality does mean more than glam. It is encouraging. Nice reference at the end.

Add New Comment