Who's in It: James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Steve Buscemi, Bobby Cannavale, Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker, Aida Turturro, Christopher Walken, Elaine Stritch, Eddie Izzard, Amy Sedaris
The Basics: Gandolfini is a construction worker who has a habit of breaking out into song in the middle of the street with other blue collar lugs, all of whom then perform elaborately choreographed musical numbers. He's not alone in this hobby. Everyone in the movie — and if there's a plot, it's basically that everyone is horny at all times and Gandolfini, in particular, wants to keep both his wife (Sarandon) and his mistress (Winslet) on the line — is prone to just bursting into karaoke versions of pop songs from the past four decades. It's a budget Moulin Rouge for mooks.
What's the Deal? You can't really call this a good movie, but it's never boring, and that counts for a lot. There aren't enough musicals made these days to fully hate the ones that do come down the chute (I mean, unless it's Rent), and this one might as well have simply been called Big, Crazy, Nearly Pointless Mess, but again, that's sort of beside the point. Its messiness, its hammy and yelled performances and its seemingly improvised plotline, all end up becoming part of its lunk-headed charm. Your level of good time will rest on your desire to see Walken sing and dance (again) or Moore perform "I Want Candy" or an entire musical number that centers on Gandolfini undergoing an adult circumcision. See? Now you're intrigued.
Who's Great: Winslet as a slutty, sex-talking dolly-bird who could make any of Kevin Smith's XXX-mouthed characters blush. And Broadway legend Stritch shows up for a bit and kind of makes the entire movie seem worthwhile. Meanwhile, if they gave awards for best performance by a crotch, Cannavale would win something, because the camera can't stop going close up on it as he thrusts his way through the entire movie.
What's Not So Great: It drags near the end because people stop singing so much. And when they stop singing you realize that this movie is about a lot of Not Much.
Directed By: John Turturro, who went through hell trying to get it into theaters. Apparently it just sat on the shelf for a couple of years without a distributor. How fascinatingly odd that half-successful, half-failure movies with A-list casts like this can languish unseen when stuff like Captivity has no trouble getting a wide release will always be a mystery.