Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Pros: John Cameron Mitchell; fun songs; witty lines; campiness
Cons: not enough background on supporting characters

“Don’t you know me, Kansas City? I’m the new Berlin Wall. Try and tear me down!” With that Hedwig, the emotionally-tortured German transvestite and punk rock singer, challenges her uncomfortable, middle-America audience in ...

Pros: the music, the music, the music [and Mitchell]
Cons: personally, none for me

If you crossed The Who, Mick Jagger, Tina Turner, Prince, Purple Rain, M. Butterfly and Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, what would you have? Wait, I’m blasted with an image even I don’t want [ darn that visualization I possess ]. No,...

Pros: Acting, costumes, music, story...
Cons: Definitely not family entertainment...

John Cameron Mitchell’s vibrant, visionary Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) follows the life of a rock and rolling East German by the name of Hansel from childhood through the moment he truly comes to accept himself as unique. Escaping with his ...

Pros: great music in a creative comedy
Cons: we wonder how they could ever possibly get booked in those terrible Red Lobster restaurants

We watch films and are attracted to certain movies because we look for ourselves; we look for someone to identify with to say “That’s me”. Hedwig hits the viewer in such a vulnerable spot that anyone watching the film, regardless of his orientation ...

Pros: Mitchell, Cast, Music, Everything, & the Music.
Cons: Can't Think of Anything Bad.

Musicals have always been a genre people either love or hate, even if it’s in Broadway. While recently, “Chicago” brought the musical back into the silver screen after winning Best Picture, the musical is still a genre some have a hard time to ...

Pros: John Cameron Mitchell. High energy musical numbers.
Cons: Confused last twenty minutes.

The Endless Suburb album is still being mixed in the studio with the darling boys from P-Town giving the backup vocals some extra youthful pizzazz. The initial tracks I've heard should blow Britney and Christina right off of the charts,...

Pros: Immense vitality & élan; awesome soundtrack; strikingly original concept & well-developed characters
Cons: The ending might seem obtuse; Gummi Bears gross me out!

Got your mother in a whirl
She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl -- David Bowie

At some time in your life, you may have "walked on the wild side" - or perhaps you live on the wild side. Or maybe you've always played it...

Pros: Poignant story, comic timing, imaginative story sequencing/direction, catchy rock music.
Cons: Not for the literal or linear-minded.

I assume -- and i promise this will relate to Hedwig and the Angry Inch in a paragraph or two -- that on September 11th, 2001, roughly fifty or so Americans died in car wrecks. A typical day's auto-wreck death-count would be a hundred Americans,...

Pros: Mitchell, the music, the live performance and the dialogue.
Cons: that it took me so long to see it.

I knew hardly anything about this film until just recently when a friend got me to watch it. I did know that it was a rock n' roll broadway play brought to the big screen about a transvestite and that everyone that thought they were "cutting edge" loved ...

Pros: Brilliant performances, script, songs and cinematography.
Cons: If you are STRICTLY a "mainstream" cinema fan, you may think Hedwig is weird.

In some respects the general public sometimes divides films into two types: "gay movie" and "not gay movie". To the casual viewer any film that centers around gay, lesbian, bisexual or transexual characters is automatically a "gay movie" and thus ...

Pros: Bravura work by writer/director/star John Cameron Mitchell; great music.
Cons: Underdeveloped supporting characters.

Never mind the fact that she's an East German transsexual whose botched sex-change operation left her with the titular "angry inch"--the character of struggling glam rocker Hedwig (John Cameron Mitchell) is an absolutely refreshing screen creation simply...

Pros: The music is enjoyable, great performance by John Cameron Mitchell, great script
Cons: Supporting cast not developed enough

What makes for a classic musical? Well, good songs, likable, if somewhat off beat, strong willed characters who remain true to themselves and amusing supporting cast. Some reasonably good dance movements. Add to that, fun campy lines that suggest 'you ...

Pros: Powerhouse performances, music and direction
Cons: None worth mentioning

In a cinematic age in which movie musicals have gone the way of ducks in winter (which is to say, south), we have been subjected to several movies that pretend to be musicals (FLASHDANCE anyone?) but which do not deliver the goods. Only Alan Parker,...

Pros: wonderfully countercultural, good nuanced relationships, cast is talented (and HOT)
Cons: no linear plot, a little pretentiously artsy (but it can afford to be)

There were two things that occurred to me as I was watching Hedwig: one is that music, these days, is about as dull and dreary and itchin' for a backlash as it was back in the mid-seventies and again in the late eightees; and the other is that,...

Pros: The music, the direction, the acting, the concert scenes.
Cons: Nervous little Bloomington/Normal GKC theaters for not running this.

Rating: Five hubcap diamondstar halos

This is the first great rock and roll movie that is not about rock and roll. It's not about the rock and roll "scene" as in The Decline of Western Civilization 1 and 2 (both ****1/2 stars and well worth...