Even for somebody like this author, who’s not typically a musical fan and who’s been lukewarm on Spielberg’s output since 2008, “West Facet Story” got here as a revelation. It is the type of film that makes you wish to run and dance or rush to your balcony and sing to the road in an unironic approach. We see these sorts of kinetic pictures onscreen as Adam Stockhausen’s Oscar-nominated manufacturing design brings outdated New York to life, and such unbridled vitality is contagious.
It is inconceivable to not get swept up within the momentum of a show-stopping quantity like “America.” In “West Facet Story,” Spielberg introduced the exhilaration of an evening on Broadway to the massive display screen, counting on recent skills like Rachel Zegler, Mike Faist, and Ariana DeBose to reenact the romance and tragedy of “Romeo and Juliet” in Fifties Manhattan. Like Rita Moreno — who co-starred within the unique 1961 “West Facet Story” and returns right here as a special character, Valentina — DeBose did reap Oscar gold for her supporting function as Anita. Nevertheless, whereas fellow Oscar nominee “Tick, Tick… Growth!” thrived on Netflix, Spielberg’s “West Facet Story” bombed on the field workplace on opening weekend.
Folks will now probably see “West Facet Story” on the small display screen. (It is at present streaming on Disney+ and HBO Max.) Twenty years in the past, the explosion of track, dance, colour, and pathos in Spielberg’s remake would have made it one other “Chicago,” which is to say: a status movie with a blockbuster turnout. It is the stuff motion pictures are manufactured from, and pandemic however, there isn’t any excuse for it to have fared so poorly in theaters. In any case, its theatrical run overlapped with “Spider-Man: No Approach Dwelling,” which made nearly $2 billion worldwide and is now the seventh-highest-grossing movie ever.