The best movie musicals of all time

Movie musicals are a tricky genre. The big screen captures grandness well, and musicals are full of grand gestures. Still, there is an electricity that can be lost when the live element is stripped away. These eight musicals keep the spark and show just what the genre can do. 

'Sweet Charity' (1969)

The number 'Big Spender' from this 1969 movie is a perfect microcosm of the musical's magic: raucous, precise, tender, broken, stylish-as-all-get-out, "endlessly inventive and borders on genius," said Le Cinema Dreams. Often described as the story of a hooker with a heart of gold, 'Sweet Charity,' in director-choreographer Bob Fosse's hands, is an everyman tale of how we survive in a world sometimes stacked against us.

'Cabaret' (1972)

The specter of the Nazis has always played a central role in 'Cabaret.' Somehow in the film version of the musical, which goes "right to the bleak heart of the material," said Roger Ebert, the imminence of that evil feels almost corporeal. The stellar performances from Liza Minnelli, as wanna-be chanteuse Sally Bowles, and Joel Grey, as the menacing Emcee, are a pleasant distraction from the creeping danger. Until you realize they might be in on it by doing nothing to prevent it. 

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'Grease' (1978)

No one believed for a greased nanosecond that anyone in this cast was a high schooler. But! What a romp this celluloid adaptation of "Grease" is. It works because of its "youthful vitality, the tremendous energy and imagination expended on its virtually wall-to-wall song and dance number," said The Hollywood Reporter. Often, songs written specifically for screen versions of Broadway musicals feel shoehorned. "Hopelessly Devoted to You" and "You're the One That I Want," though, are stellar pop fun, even if they are more '80s tunes than '60s ones.

'Little Shop of Horrors' (1986)

The insouciance of this 1986 adaptation of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman's musical is irresistible. Steve Martin inhaling the scenery as Orin Scrivello, the sadistic dentist? Rick Moranis dweebing his way through the movie as lovesick Seymour? Ellen Green reprising her celebrated turn as the put-upon Audrey? Marvels, all. "'Little Shop' is a love story," said Jessica Hopkins in The Guardian. "It's also a story about conquering your demons and discovering the best you can be — even if it takes a blood-guzzling talking plant to get you there."

'Chicago' (2002)

A common, albeit misguided, gripe about movie musicals is that no one bursts into song in real life. As if there is anything real about a medium in which cameras capture actors performing. In this adaptation of Kander and Ebb's 1975 musical, director Rob Marshall circumvents that complaint by having the musical numbers occur in the characters' heads. More important, 'Chicago' is cheeky and sexy, "flashing more thigh than Kentucky Fried Chicken, generating excitement with bullet-timed editing and brassy, hip-shaking musical numbers," said Elvis Mitchell in The New York Times.

'Dreamgirls' (2006)

The film did not quite make the screen star of Beyoncé that everyone — but probably especially Beyoncé — was hoping. Still, Bill Condon's adaptation of the 1981 musical, "one timeless, tuneful fable of glory, greed, heartbreak," said Empire, did a bang-up job conveying the enthusiasm and tension of a 1960s girl group trying to find their way as a collective and as individuals. "Dreamgirls" sure did make a star of Jennifer Hudson, playing Effie White. 

'Tick, Tick… Boom!' (2021)

A cult hit if there ever was one, "Tick, Tick… Boom" was one of "Rent" composer Jonathan Larson's first musicals. It is full of youthful fervor, in all the good and less-good ways you can think of. And Lin-Manuel Miranda, that consummate theater nerd, directed this film adaptation with a like-souled intensity. His work "unspools as an exuberant ode to Larson and a tribute to anyone, especially those in the arts, who might be chasing big dreams," said Entertainment Weekly. Witness the number "Sunday," an homage to Sondheim's faultless musical "Sunday in the Park with George." In Miranda's imagining, the song becomes a theater-history phantasmagoria, with an endless parade of Broadway stars appearing as extras. 

'West Side Story' (2021)

Blasphemy alert: The 2021 Spielberg remake of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim's classic just might be better than the 1961 original. It feels fresh without being forced; the color palette grants the story bite; aside from fumbling Ansel Elgort as Tony, the performances are sublime. Ariana DeBose, deservedly, won an Oscar for her performance as Anita. "There are scenes in Spielberg’s version that will melt you, scenes that will make your pulse race, and scenes where you simply sit back and revel in the big-spirited grandeur of it all," said Owen Glieberman in Variety.