Steven Spielberg's 'West Side Story' sees critics and paying audiences part ways: Critics rave about a woke masterpiece, but the American public don't seem to agree with a film that gives them the middle finger

American Thinker ^ | 12/14/2021 | Andrea Widburg

[SeekAndFind]

Full disclosure: I despise Steven Spielberg movies and dislike both Romeo and Juliet and the 1961 West Side Story (WSS) movie.  For that reason, I take particular delight in noting that Steven Spielberg's remake of WSS may have enthralled critics, but no one is rushing to see it.  And no wonder, given that it's so darn woke that parts of it are in a language most Americans don't speak, but Spielberg refused to include subtitles.

Let me quickly get through my biases.  I hate Steven Spielberg movies because I find them overblown, predictable, and incredibly boring.  I also dislike the way he presents children.  I gather from watching bios of him that he was an unpleasant little boy, and so are his characters.  Some say they're realistic; I say they're too disagreeable to be trapped with for a movie's duration.

I dislike Romeo and Juliet because it's hard to imagine two more nincompoopish young people.  At every opportunity, they take the stupid, thoughtless path.  There's nothing romantic about that.  The only thing that makes sense to me is the contention that Shakespeare didn't write the play as romance; he wrote it as a cautionary tale holding that impulsive young people should never be trusted to manage their romances and marriages.  Unfortunately, Shakespeare's writing was so transcendent that people loved the romance and ignored the message.

And I dislike WSS because the primitive pop psychology of 1950s leftists leaves me cold, and the movie was horribly miscast, with every lead character, except Rita Moreno, being embarrassingly bad.  I also dislike Marni Nixon's voice (she dubbed Natalie Wood's singing).  The opening Jets ballet is kind of fun in a '50s style, but everything else...meh.

You may disagree with me and probably will.  My answer is that nobody will ever accuse me of following the crowd.

[Scarlett156]

I don’t remember who criticized me for criticizing Mr Nolte on this forum or why and I’m much too lazy to look it up at this time.

But I recall that the person said, “Don’t read him, then!” because I had said a negative remark. Well, this is why I would still read him, because most of it’s good and on target. Sometimes I read something and it doesn’t live up to my expectations, so I say something, but it’s not meant to destroy anyone. I don’t care if anyone cares about what I think. (Does it seem like I do? That’s an honest question. Please feel free to reply.)

[MoochPooch]

In Godfather and Tombstone the unsubtitled scenes are short enough that one can understand the context and look up translations later.

If I recall, both GODFATHER 1 & 2 were English-subtitled -- for scenes both in the U.S. and Sicily.

There were snatches of foreign dialog here or there. When I asked my brother about one line, he joked, "By now you should know Italian!"

[minnesota_bound]

Why is the guy on the outside of the fire escape? When he could be on the stairs and not worry about falling several stories.

[70times7]

You are mistaken, but then again, I was not as clear as I could have been.

Yes, nearly all of the Italian spoken in those films was subtitled. However, I was referring to the Italian discussion in the restaurant where Michael kills Sollozzo and Captain McCluskey. Subtitles were left out intentionally.

In Tombstone I was referring to the Latin exchange between Doc Holiday and Johnny Ringo.