Miss Saigon. I've seen it in the theater numerous times, in Dutch, German and English. I knew cast members who could sneak me in and seat me next to the engineers. I even auditioned for it. I know this show front stage and backstage. You might say, I'm a fan.
Talks about a movie being made made from it made me excited and worried at the same time (see what they did to Les Mis, the show is good, but the movie sucked in so many ways). Probably their decision (for now) to do the theater registration as a movie was really smart. This way you could not lose the pace of the story, the whole drama is already finished and the only thing you need to do is put a camera on it.
Sometimes I'd forget that they were on stage, you would hear the audience react sometimes and even than it was not completely clear if it was inside the cinema or inside the movie (I was seated last row). It could easily have been inside the cinema, the rest of the people clearly enjoyed it as much as I did, also for them it was a great night.
The acting was great, the singing was great and of course the story, based on the Opera Madame Butterfly, is a solid drama. It was filmed pretty up close, there were not so many wide shots, which made you get deeply involved in the drama even more than in the theater. At several moments, because of the music, the story, the acting, I just burst out in tears. Oh how I love me some musical drama.
And when the story was over, the show went on and featured a grand finale with (some of) the original cast members returning to the parts that made them famous or won them Tony's. And they were funny, really funny.
So this movie or registration or whatever you like to call it, did for me what so many movies can't seem to be able to do these days: move me. The logo for theater that has been used many times is the laughing mask and the crying mask and this night, in the cinema, this all came together perfectly. It may as well be the best musical theater on film I have ever seen. Very well done.
