De-Lovely

Cole Porter wrote many of the wittiest and most beautiful songs ever, and had a very unconventional love life to back them up. Overall, this movie does a fair-to-excellent job of showing both the highs and lows of a complex relationship and of the man himself.

I was pleased to see that accomplished singer Kline was able to croak out the songs that his character wrote, because Porter was known to be a poor singer. It would have been a big mistake to have him sing like an angel.

That said, I can only presume that the studio's desire to pander to a young audience is the explanation for an absolutely horrible series of botched attempts by various pop artists to sing Porter's songs. Some, like Elvis Costello's effort, are just able to slide in under the radar, and Natalie Cole's is pretty reasonable. But somebody in charge should have stricken the songs sung by Alannis Morissete ("Let's Do It") and the even worse Sheryl Crowe ("Begin the Beguine"), or at least replaced them with other singers in body or at least in voice. I can see how Morissete's croaky, glitchy vocal stylings work for her in her own pop music, but they only annoy in this context; she also has no sense of the style required. Crowe's voice is actually less irritating in her number, but what were they thinking otherwise? Doesn't she know the melody? Does she only have a range of 5 notes? Instead of attracting younger people to Porter's songs, I expect that it will only make them ask 'why do people like this rubbish', not realizing who is really at fault.

This one would be a DVD keeper for me, if it were not for this glaring problem.