@Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival
The First feature-film directed by Giselle Bonilla is a dark comedy focused on Doug (Will Brill), a middle-school teacher and wanna-be playwright, that turns into exploring his dark side when he finds out his ex-girlfriend and colleague Abigail (Gillian Jacobs) is dating the school’s principal Brady (Rob Lowe). Which could be the best way to take revenge for what he perceives like a betrayal? Obviously using his young students, specifically making them bring onto stage a play that will destroy the institute’s good reputation.
At the beginning, The Musical owns a quite intriguing start: behind the gentle tone and the soft pace developed in the first scenes, there is a cynicism and bitter characters that remind of some Tood Solondz movies like Welcome to the Dollhouse, or Election by Alexander Payne. The director uses the editing in order to create a slightly surreal tone, which perfectly matches with Will Brill’s style of acting. In fact even if the pitch doesn’t strike as anything particularly original, nonetheless the protagonist has the right face and body language to play the classic “Mr. Nobody”, a man frustrated with his own life but incapable of improving his situation, and consequently projecting his pain onto everyone around him. In addition to that, Giselle Bonilla shows that she is a deep movie lover, using a discreet amount of irony for referencing in her work masterpieces like The Shining by Stanley Kubrick, Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola and Dead Poets Society by Peter Weir.
The premises for The Musical to become a dazzling movie were quite there, but unfortunately after a good first twenty minutes or so, it seems the director doesn’t want to make a clear choice about what kind of tone she wants to develop or even explore. There are in fact a few moments when this could turn into a gripping psychological drama, seasoned with effective horror nuances. The problem is Bonilla doesn’t seem to have the courage to go deeper in this kind of genre rabbit hole, instead prefers to keep the plot and the tone into a more subtle kind of storytelling, missing the chance to create something courageous.
The best quality of The Musical in the end is the way Giselle Bonilla directs her cast. Gillian Jacobs doesn’t have a character that really sticks in your mind, but fills it with the necessary gentle touch. Rob Lowe is a quite fine actor when it’s about portraying characters who are shallow, embracing the emptiness of their role in society. He is the perfect antagonist for Will Brill, who is by far the best in show. With his face that seems made of rubber and those grumpy eyes capable of saying everything without expressing anything, he looks like a distant nephew of Buster Keaton. If he had to deal with a character that would have been more developed in order to explore its dark corners, it could have been a performance to remember.
The Musical isn’t a bad movie, but it is way too soft in order to add something valuable to this genre of stories. When it looks like the plot or the atmosphere are becoming grotesque or at least a little bit creepier, Giselle Bonilla refrains from going all the way. In this case then her feature film doesn’t accomplish what it could have, and turns out a comedy that lets the audience mass almost an hour and a half of decent entertainment but really nothing much more. And that’s a pity, because the premises to make a movie that could show a harsh but accurate commentary or some issue of tour times were totally there.
Rate: C
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