I know that the Niles and Frasier Cranes of the world are capable of making the distinctions between grand operas, operettas, and musicals. Frankly, those distinctions are lost on me. If I applied myself, I'm sure I could discover the difference between a Rossini production and a Disney film, but I confess that at present they seem very largely the same to me.

Whenever there is singing in a dramatic production, I invariably feel locked out of it, incapable of understanding it, deeply lost, profoundly confused, and uncomfortably alienated.

But I see the smiles on the faces of those around me--and I am curious. I want to understand how to see the film (or opera) (or musical) they are watching so that I can share in their pleasure. I thought that Topsy-Turvy might help me to understand what it was about the productions of Gilbert and Sullivan that made them appeal to so many people.

Instead, I got something that felt very much like just another Gilbert and Sullivan production.

I should have heeded the advice of two other reviewers (Mangiotto and Aruzenchin) who both make it very clear in their reviews that Topsy-Turvy is a film for people who like Gilbert and Sullivan. As Aruzenchin put it, "Naturally, if you dislike Gilbert and Sullivan, you perhaps should stay away from [Topsy-Turvy]."

Mangiotto's (anti-)recommendation is somewhat less diplomatic: "The musical interludes have no bearing on the outcome of the film in any way. They are there for your enjoyment, or lack thereof. . . . It’s a bit like going to the Tony Danza bio-pic and being forced to watch entire episodes of Who’s the Boss? recreated in toto. Fine if you’re a fan – most certainly not fine if you’re not."

But I paid no heed to their recommendations. I thought that Mike Leigh was the sort of director who could examine people whose work puzzles me without being puzzling himself. To clarify my point, allow me to direct the reader to a bone-tinglingly good film called Georgia. Georgia is about the bond between a successful country/western singer and her screwed-up sister. It is entirely possible that country/western music is the only thing in the universe that I loathe more completely than stories of sisterly affection gone awry. But Georgia is nothing short of brilliant. The country singing is not the least bit irritating because it is essential to the narrative.

I disregarded Mangiotto's warning and assumed that a filmmaker as intelligent as Mike Leigh would have to figure out some way to make the musical scenes essential to the narrative of Topsy-Turvy. I stuck through the entire (ridiculously long) film in the hope that I would be able to forge a connection that Mangiotto had missed. "Ha ha!" I would be able to write in my review. "Other reviewers have failed to see that the reason Leigh must give us such protracted excerpts from The Mikado is that he ________________."

Unfortunately, the only way to fill in that blank is to say that Leigh's reason for including so many excerpts was that he really didn't want to do a movie about Gilbert and Sullivan at all. Writing about the feud between the orchestrator and librettist was merely an excuse to present us with Leigh's own version of The Mikado. There is nothing in the film to unlock the appeal of operettas for those of us who do not already understand that appeal.

I never would have thought that I could care about a country singer until I saw Georgia; but having seen Topsy-Turvy has not in the slightest degree increased my interest in or understanding of Gilbert and Sullivan. If you think it's unforgivably stupid for a person on a stage to make a monosyllabic word do the rhythmic work of an octosyllabic word by trilling a hideous scale into the vowel, then be prepared to find yourself categorizing Topsy-Turvy as stupid.

Because it is stupid. It's a musical masquerading as a movie in order to con folks like me into watching it. And musicals are stupid.

Or, to put it another way: If you go into this movie believing that musicals are stupid, you will come out of it believing that musicals are stupid. And if you feel stupid for watching the film after having been warned, at least you won't be alone. I was warned, too. And I'm feeling incredibly stupid just now.


Recommended: No