Lucky Stiff movie

[jasonf]

Posted: 7/30/15 at 9:03pm

So I tried watching this on demand, but the sound quality was so terrible we ended up shutting it off after 15 minutes and getting the charges reversed. The movie seemed fine, but the voices would disappear under the music. I know the score so it didn't bother me much, but my wife didn't and couldn't understand most of what was being sung.

 

Anyone else see this and not have a problem with this?  It does look like a fun movie...

[Kylechristopherwest]

Posted: 7/31/15 at 2:39pm

I purchased the movie on Amazon, and had no problems with it. That being said, I felt the movie was pretty mediocre. I couldn't figure out what the director was really aiming for.

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 8/15/15 at 11:31am

I enjoyed this. I noticed that the film cut about 4 or 5 songs but aside from that and the obvious lip syncing to prerecorded tracks, which was somewhat distracting, I thought the film was funny and well worth 75 minutes of your time to sit back and laugh a little. Dominic Marsh and Niki M. James are very charming and Pamela Shaw steals the show with her craziness. 

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 8/15/15 at 12:32pm

After hearing a description of this, will wait for it on Netflix

[ClydeBarrow]

Posted: 8/15/15 at 1:03pm

"After hearing a description of this, will wait for it on Netflix"

 

As if any of us thought you'd ever pay to see this movie. Thanks for confirming though.

[gypsy101]

Posted: 8/26/15 at 2:25pm

i finally watched this today, I got it from a friend. I actually really enjoyed the movie. I love Nikki M. James, if they made a movie version of Once On This Island in the next few years she'd be good for it (or if there was a revival).

[Alessio2]

Posted: 8/26/15 at 3:39pm

Netflix is a paid service though, so technically one is paying for it.

[goldenstate5]

Posted: 3/30/16 at 5:05pm

Old thread, I know, but I just saw this after being reminded that I saw a trailer for this two years ago and it looked pretty mediocre, aside from the fact that the songs were recorded with a full orchestra. I do find "Lucky Stiff" to be a charming and silly little musical, and Ahrens and Flaherty's score is definitely saccharine... but sue me I like some low-rent-Alan-Menken saccharine.

78 minutes later and... well, there were two things I got out of it:

1) Nikki M. James is a delight, and she knocks "Times Like This" out of the park. Not to mention that it is the one musical sequence that utilizes the film's eccentric visual qualities and makes them work, almost as if the film was built entirely around this number. It's extremely obvious why there's no soundtrack available, but I was little bummed to find that nobody has at least cut this one little gem and uploaded it, it's the only thing I want to rewatch.

2) Sure enough, a full orchestra that seems to jump between a set number of pieces I guess depending on how much of the budget was given to Michael Starobin that day. For example, "Speaking French" is very light (maybe on purpose but it doesn't help), and it doesn't help that it immediately swerves into the lush, twinkling arrangements of "Times Like This". (which, again, fully embraces its heartfelt whimsy) It's jarring, but thankfully most of the songs are given the full treatment, which is what I wanted out of this in the first place.

The only other positive I have to say is that it's only 78 minutes long. So, so little of this film works due to the inane erratic nature of... well, everything. I'm not sure if the editor was trying to do their best at salvaging a film that may have run out of money or if this really is the director's vision... if its the latter, fire your editor ASAP. But sadly I suspect it was probably a little of both.

It feels like there was no sense of actual direction or even cohesion. The script is lifted straight from the musical's book and is cut down with little sense of adapting them for the screen. Instead, they go for the awful Producers route and try to make up for it by having nearly every actor aside from the main couple scream their performances. I know it's a farce, but I thought Pamela Shaw and Jason Alexander were going to consume Monte Carlo itself. Almost all of the jokes are either non-existent, presented obnoxiously or are just turned into normal dialogue and robbed of the comedy. I did not laugh once, and that seems inconcievable for me for a movie with Jason Alexander in it. 

It does shy away from using the corpse too much in a seeming nod of updating the material in a post-Weekend-at-Bernie's world. Even if that movie is nearly almost as old as the show, there's no escaping the comparison so they just use him as a macguffin and that's it. (unfortunately they don't replace it with much else) Oh and a bunch of strange shots of reflections in his sunglasses when people interact with him. Because we have to be reminded that he's dead I guess. Constantly.

Almost every single musical number is poorly choreographed, mixed, acted and executed. They all fall flat on their face aside from, again, "Times Like This". "Good to be Alive" clumsily attempts the joke of having a huge crowd-filled dance number in a claustrophobic train cabin and it felt like nobody had any idea how to make it work... but they tried anyways and failed, shrugging that it's "good enough". And... oh boy, there's the nightmare number. A painfully tired attempt at old-fashioned Burton/Selick-like imagery but set in a stage environment, place inside the theatre from earlier. Not a terrible idea, but it would really help if the sets and makeup didn't look like it was literally made for a high school production. It's that horribly low-rent and lazy, and just sadly dull. Flash animation and retro-styled green screen effects will only take you so far.

The worst has just got to be the transitions and the pacing. The film is littered with this minimalistic chic flash animation, and it kind of serves as a caulking device, patching up every piece of the film that they couldn't afford to film. (oh, and to reinforce the idea that Harry hates dogs every five minutes like the audience are morons) The biggest offender is the chase sequence in the last third, which takes what should be a sharp, comedic farcial sequence and comes across as just merely incomprehensible. After some more Pamela/Jason mugging, it ends with quite possibly one of the clumsiest, rushed and abrupt pieces of editing I've ever seen in a motion picture. I had to watch that twice to make sure I didn't miss anything. 

Then comes the ending which anybody who has seen it knows why this show is an off-Broadway and community theatre favorite only. It follows the book to a tee and yup, it comes across as dull and lifeless... a ten-minute long reminder of the importance of properly adapting from the stage to screen. They do attempt to shake it up with the final number escaping the hotel room trappings, but it's too little, too late.

And then there's a quick scene before the credits of Harry and Annabelle living together with dogs galore. Because the director felt like the material deserve one extra, totally unnecessary, downright mystifying dollop of saccharine. "No, no, you didn't just watch a mismanaged attempt at a farce, it was a romantic comedy, see?!"

Nothing upsets me more than the fact that nobody knows how to do a well-done feature musical comedy adaptation anymore. With shows like Galavant and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend on the air, you'd think one would eventually slip through the cracks. I know this was some bizarre low-budget passion project, but it still had big names attached and set out to bring this obscure musical to life... I still consider this wasted potential, then again it's kind of an achievement in of itself that this actually got made so... ehh.

Updated On: 3/30/16 at 05:05 PM