It may sound churlish to say, but "Topsy-Turvy", a movie about the comic-operetta composers Gilbert & Sullivan and the creation of "The Mikado", has too much music in it. That's the only explanation I can come up with for this movie being 2 hours and 40 minutes long. At the end, I felt like I had sat through the story, an entire production of "The Mikado", and half a production of "Princess Ida" besides. Oh, sure, there are a few subplots I would have done away with; the few scenes dealing with Gilbert's parents are completely superfluous and should have ended up on the cutting floor, but that would have still resulted in a movie that was 2 hours and 35 minutes long. At the screening I attended, the film broke (melted, actually) about an hour into the picture. About two-thirds of the audience escaped while they had the opportunity. My girlfriend enjoyed a hearty nap, and so long as she wasn't snoring, I didn't have the heart to wake her up and make her watch the film.
The basic plot is that G & S' most recent operetta, "Princess Ida", is a flop. Sullivan wants to escape the comic ghetto he feels confined to and write "serious" music. When Gilbert approaches him with his new libretto, Sullivan dismisses it as so much "topsy-turvy", relying on ridiculous contrivances and leaning too heavily on their prior work, and refuses to set it to music. It seems that the successful partnership may be coming to an end when inspiration finds Gilbert in the form of a Japanese exhibition his long-suffering wife drags him to. Speaking with a friend who is a Gilbert & Sullivan fan, it appears to me that the film is accurate in every detail. Tediously, unerringly, unendingly accurate.
It's a shame, really, because the story is a compelling one, the settings exquisite, and the acting top-notch. Jim Broadbent manages ultimately to make the stern, straitlaced Victorian Gilbert a likeable (if sometimes clueless, particularly in regards to his wife) character, and Allan Corduner conveys the sense of artistic frustration and libertine indulgence of Arthur Sullivan. Ron Cook is a pleasantly suave (and slightly oily) D'Oyly Carte, the impresario who built an industry around the talents of his two charges. The musical performances are uniformly excellent. There are just too many of them. It's a fine line to walk; if you have too few songs, you risk the wrath of the Gilbert & Sullivan fans for not highlighting the music enough. Go to the other extreme and you lose the wider audience by drowning them in celluloid. This film has chosen that other extreme.
I don't wish to come down too hard on the film. Despite my complaints, I actually enjoyed it. I'm not really a Gilbert & Sullivan fan, but I thought the music was wonderful. I just don't see this film reaching many people who aren't already fans. This is a film made largely for the cognoscenti who won't mind the excesses (and for the New York Film Critics, who inexplicably awarded this sprawling mess Best Film and Best Director honors).
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