I'm strangely bipolar towards musicals of both film and stage. I say that because, for the most part, I'll either love a musical or hate it. And normally it's the perceived 'classics' that I hate. West Side Story, The Sound of Music, Oliver!, My Fair Lady (the film and not the stage version, which I actually like when done well)... I can't stand any of them. Not because they're badly-made; all of them won Best Picture Oscars and have substantial craft in them. I guess for me it's just a question of suspension of disbelief. As petty as this is going to sound, I don't believe that any of the characters in those films would just suddenly break out into song. (Especially West Side Story, which feels strangely wrong on so many levels.) It's not that I object to random bursts of song and dance in general, but in those films it feels perfunctory more than anything else. Like they're sticking to the tried-and-tested formula with little-to-no variation. And while that's fine for most people, I guess I just want something more.
Which is why most of the film musicals I like are a bit more unconventional. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg - a ridiculously bright, 60s French musical - is one of my favourite films of all time, and its picturebook cinematography and sung-through libretto just feels right. Similarly, I've always felt that Chicago gets a bad rap from musical fans due to its occasionally schizophrenic editing, but I really admire the narrative risks that film took and - yes - I think the editing works more often than it doesn't to create the atmosphere the film is going for. And then there's something like Dancer in the Dark, with the crazy musical stylings of Bjork in all of her Bjorkiest, and it's completely un-musical: harrowing in a legitimate sense of the word, and not the 'musical' sense. I could talk about more film musicals that I like (and alternatively hate) but that would be boring and take up too much of your time.
Stage musicals, on the other hand, I have a greater affection for. Living in London helps, as I'd had no exposure beforehand. I mentioned liking My Fair Lady earlier; that's probably because I worked on a student production of it at uni and came to admire the craft of not only the book and music in equal measure. It's still a bloated-ass film, though. Other favourites include the more modern, filthy Avenue Q and The Book of Mormon, whose vulgarity adds an extra bit of oomph to a medium that's (often rightly) perceived as staid. But my favourite stage musical is probably Company by Stephen Sondheim. Genuinely revelatory about story construction, musicality and just gosh-darn human emotion, I feel something different every time I see it (which, admittedly, is just videos of productions, but that still counts!)
And yet, despite the word vomit you've just read, I wouldn't consider myself a massive musical fan. The ones I like, I often reeeeeeeally like. But, more often than not, they happen to be anarchic drops in an otherwise campy and traditional ocean. Maybe I am a bigger fan than I realise and have just been in denial this entire time... meh. And I didn't even talk about the Disney musical renaissance of the 90s! Ah well, another time.