Mama Mia!

I had no idea the entire musical oeuvre of ABBA was really about a girl looking for her true father before she gets married on a Greek Island. This is the storyline on which the writer hangs 18 ABBA songs in Mamma Mia! It gives you an idea of the immense popularity of ABBA’s music that this combination of story and song has produced a worldwide theatrical smash hit. As if 400 million records sold didn’t already tell us this.

If you have to write the book or script for a musical, the big problem you have to solve is how to use the songs to drive the story. Otherwise story and song become two separate tracks and the audience waits for the song to end so they can get back to what happens next.

But in Mamma Mia! this problem is reversed. The storyline is so lame, absurd and emotionally phony that the audience can’t wait to hear another catchy song to find relief from the awful script. I’ve never been a big ABBA fan, but during the course of this movie I came to believe that they were the greatest musical geniuses in history; such was the chasm between story and song.

And then there is the matter of the casting. Any director will tell you that 80-90% of the job is who you pick to play the roles. This has to be the worst cast movie in modern memory. Most of these actors are at least 20 years too old for their parts. Watching 60+ Meryl Streep cavorting like a 15-year-old teeny bopper was one of the five most painful moments of my life. And Pierce Brosnan will surely be nominated for best statue imitating a person trying to sing. In fact, the casting of this movie was so mind-boggling that I realized it was actually a stroke of genius in which the filmmakers were using aged movie stars to highlight the artistic absurdity of the entire decade of the 70s.

What can a screenwriter learn from this train wreck? Well, first, be sure to make friends with the most popular candy pop band in history so they will give you the rights to 18 of their songs, and then you can write a horrible script tying them all together and no one will care. Second…

Enchanted

It's easy to underestimate the fantasy form, especially when it's a Disney family picture like Enchanted. But writer Bill Kelly knows his genre and its potential, especially when it's mixed with other forms.

Enchanted is really a combination of fantasy, fairy tale, romantic comedy, musical and the traveling angel story. That's a lot of forms, which is why this film is more complicated than it appears. Most writers trying to mix all those genres end up with a structural mess. Too many heroes, too many desire lines, too many story beats and so on. But Kelly makes it work.

One reason for the film's success is that Kelly has combined genres that work well together. Fantasy and musical have very similar thematic underpinnings. Both are about learning how to live well, which they define as forming a community. Love stories are about creating a community of two. The traveling angel story concerns a (usually) perfect person who enters a community in trouble and sets it right.

Now all of this thematic unity doesn't change the fact that mixing so many forms is tricky. Kelly starts by establishing the foundation of the story, which is the fantasy and fairy tale opening world. Though an apparent utopia, the world has a big flaw, which is the jealous queen. And the princess, though apparently perfect and about to be married, has a flaw as well. She has no emotional depth and therefore is about to marry the wrong person. One of the nice touches here is that the audience is no more aware of this at the beginning than is the princess. The viewer, having seen decades of Disney films, is as caught up in the promise of fairy tale life as the princess is. But this weakness is crucial because it creates the need in one of the lovers that is essential for a good love story.

With the foundation set, the heroine travels to the second, fantastical world. Ironically this film flips the beat and makes the second world all too real, modern day New York. But for the Princess it is a nightmare, a dystopia, and, true to the fantasy form, it is where the heroine will learn her great life lesson. It is also where the traveling angel plot kicks in. Using music and her own boundless, fairy tale optimism, she begins to help the characters who are in trouble and turns the cold New Yorkers in Central Park into a utopian community.

This is also where the love story line resumes. The man who helps her out has his own weakness and need. He's a single dad who doesn't believe in love. He needs to feel love again, for himself and his daughter. From this point on the film plays out the key beats of the fantasy, love story and traveling angel story. One of the fun aspects of modern fairy tales is seeing how the writer comes up with modern equivalents of fairly tale elements, like transformations, spells and kingdoms. For example, when the Princess finds herself in need of a fairy godmother, the daughter pulls out the greatest wish fulfiller of all time, dad's credit card.

Hollywood blockbuster films are all about mixing genres. Even pleasant little children's stories are more difficult than they appear, because they usually require a lot of forms. If you are interested in modernizing a fairy tale - which is a very successful story strategy - check out the Great Screenwriting Class. For fantasy, of course, go to the Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction Class or the Fantasy Software. You can learn Romantic Comedy in the Love Story Class or Software, or in the Comedy Class or Software. I explain the ever-popular Traveling Angel story in the Comedy Class and Software.

Above all, try to combine forms that work well together. In Enchanted, writer Bill Kelly shows the tremendous advantage that comes from knowing your craft.

Dreamgirls

All musicals have a special problem when it comes to storytelling. They use two tracks of communication, drama and music. The writer must let each form do what it does best and then somehow connect them and make them appear to be one line.

Dreamgirls has many fine elements, most especially some of its pop songs and a number of dazzling performances. But the screenplay is not its strength. The script is serviceable, allowing the writer to hang the songs on a storyline. But even that breaks down about half way through, so the second half of the movie feels like a concert with too many songs stuffed down our throats.

Not surprisingly, the story problems come out of the character setup. In the beginning of the film, Effie is the main character. She is the lead singer and the driving force in the group's desire to reach the top. But the Dreamgirls are quickly taken over by Curtis (Jamie Foxx), who determines all the action steps the group will take. The problem with Curtis as a character is that there is nothing inside. He's not a person, he's a money-making machine. Also, even though he is driving the action, he is the Dreamgirls' main opponent.

This kind of character setup isn't a problem as long as Effie is the lead singer of the group. But halfway through the story, she gets tossed out. At this point Dreamgirls essentially ends. But there's still half a movie to go, and the second half feels infinitely longer than the first. Why? Notice the domino effect. Replacing Effie as lead singer is Deena (Beyonce Knowles), who has been chosen because she is so plastic and bland. So she can't carry the second half of the story. That leaves the plot pusher, Curtis, but all of his action steps at this point involve making more money, which is the same story beat. So the story fractures and grinds to a halt. Now the songs have no line to hang on, no emotion to punctuate. No matter how good a song might be on its own, each one feels, at this point in the film, like a big fat blob. I found myself begging the screen, "Please don't make me sit through another interminable song."

A lot has been made of the writer's attempt to go beyond the personal to the historical and the political. To show the rise of black music during the civil rights era and how black music was then co-opted by the white corporate establishment. I certainly applaud the effort. But the technique isn't there. Again the prime culprit is all those never-ending songs. The writer has no time to develop the complex interconnections between the musical history and the political history. So he relies on the old film chestnut, the montage. This is shorthand writing, and all it does is confirm the simplest stereotypes. In fact, Dreamgirls includes one of the most offensive scenes of the year, when it shows a terrific "black" song being stolen and defiled by a truly horrible white pop band that is supposed to stand for all "white" music.

For me the most interesting element in this movie is one it did not intend. Thematically it paints itself into a corner; it moves logically and inexorably to an indictment of itself. Dreamgirls supposedly shows the history of Motown music, but it doesn't have any Motown songs. It shows the corruption of soul music into generic pap, acceptable to all, and the movie is just another example of that endpoint.

Chicago

The key story device of the film adaptation of Chicago is the decision to do the musical numbers as fantasies from the mind of the lead character, Roxie, who dreams of being a star.

This device has two advantages. First, it gives the audience an excuse for why "real" characters are singing and dancing. This is the first problem that must be solved in any movie musical. Putting the numbers in Roxie's head not only lets the audience enjoy the pleasure of song and dance, it makes the music come from character.

Second, the device lets the filmmakers avoid the other great problem with movie musicals, their length. Movie musicals have to tell a complete story and also do ten or so songs. Typically, the story comes to a grinding halt while a song is performed. And while the songs may be lovely, the leapfrog of story and song can seem interminable.

But using the fantasy device in Chicago, the filmmakers are able to cross-cut story material with the musical number, thus making the overall film considerably tighter.

Catherine Zeta-Jones does an excellent job pretending to be a dancer. But no amount of trick editing and skirted costumes can hide the fact that she is too heavy for the part. And when the "women behind bars" dance number comes on, the sight of women who can dance makes it clear just how much we lose aesthetically by having to use a star instead of a professional dancer.

Moulin Rouge

This movie knows the power of the cross-cut. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be aware of the cross-cut's weaknesses.

Moulin Rouge is at its best is when it is cross-cutting within the scene. The opening and closing twenty minutes are superb. Cross-cutting within the scene highlights suspense - since many actions are happening at once - and texture - because it shows the layers of a place and a moment.

But cross-cutting within the scene is by its nature horizontal. To go horizontal you have to have a strong narrative drive to support the sideward movement. This script has no story drive between the opening and closing sections. So it collapses under its own weight.

The story stalls at the song "Like a Virgin". Why? Because the creators are hitting the same beat; the hero has already won his goal, the girl, so all that is left is fooling the dim-witted opponent again and again.

This film shows what happens when you ignore the basics of storytelling and go for the flash. Moulin Rouge has almost no plot, so instead of a knockout, this film is two great scenes framing a flatline.