Places like the Burlesque Lounge—the prime location for Burlesque, the new musical starring Cher and Christina Aguilera—exist only in the movies. Only on screen would the logistics of such a place be remotely possible (both physically and economically). This fantasy location—a puffed-up cross between the nightclubs in Cabaret and Chicago—employs dozens of female and male dancers; a full band; a DJ; one waitress; one bartender; and Stanley Tucci as Sean, a gay combination of stage manager/hand holder to the owner. Said owner would be Cher, who is called Tess, the only performer in the place who sings her own numbers, dispenses hard-bitten showbiz maxims to her girls, fights off an ex-husband (Peter Gallagher) who keeps nagging her about finances AND finds time to act as seamstress for her flock, mending their torn stockings, feather boas, etc.
Naturally, the Burlesque Lounge also features fabulous lighting, sound and a large, multi-level stage awash in the passionate pinks, purples and reds that Hollywood has always employed when portraying these sin palaces. Occasionally, a few customers are glimpsed seated at the tiny tables and booths squeezed in front of the stage—delighted, naturally, at the over-the-top spectacle they are seeing. It’s no wonder, with all this excess, that Tess is up to her carefully painted eyebrows in debt, about to lose her precious fantasy club to the bank or Marcus (Eric Dane), a sexy wolf in sheep’s clothing who is constantly sniffing out the new girls.
Into this hotbed environment located in some mythic part of Hollywood comes small-town girl Ali (Christina Aguilera), who is so eager to have her dreams of stardom realized that she grabs a tray when neither Tess nor Sean will immediately put her onstage and goes to work. Jack, the hunky bartender with the eyeliner and bulging muscles (Twilight’s Cam Gigandet), takes pity on the kid and goes to bat for her with Tess, who begrudgingly lets her stay. When Ali’s hotel room is robbed, Jack also provides a place to stay. Almost immediately, jealousy raises its ugly head and during her chance on stage, Nikki (Kristen Bell), the star of the show, tries to sabotage plucky Ali. But to everyone’s surprise (except ours), Ali starts belting it out and, in true cliché form, A Star Is Born.
Who will Ali choose between evil Marcus or poor but sex-on-two-legs Jack? Will she end up helping out Tess in the nick of time? Will she sing one song after another, dressed to the nines, singing in that unrelenting bluesy, fog horn voice? Will she even win over crabby old Nikki?
Yes and yes, again—of course. Everything in Burlesque is so familiar, so telegraphed, that the entire movie felt like déjà vu to me—it’s a pastiche of pastiche—a movie hall of mirrors with one image leading to another, going all the way back to the ’30s movies of Busby Berkeley, with Ruby Keeler going on stage an understudy and coming back off a star. It makes perfect sense that this variation on Showgirls/A Star Is Born/Glitter would be the creation of a gay writer-director (Steve Antin, making his feature debut) and not unlike those backstage showbiz stories, such as Victor/Victoria and the aforementioned Cabaret and Chicago, Burlesque was made for Our People.
It doesn’t even matter in the end that not one of the new songs is any good (a shame—this could have kicked the movie into nirvana for me), that Cher’s mask of a face doesn’t even move when she’s sobbing, that the film wastes Alan Cumming, that Aguilera has very little acting range (the camera loves her and much of the performance—aside from the leather lungs of course—is about her piles of blonde Bridget Bardot hair, bee-stung lips and sexpot body) or that the glittering, frantically staged numbers aren’t particularly memorable.
It doesn’t even matter that there is nothing remotely fresh or inventive on screen and that a better title for this movie that calls to mind so many other movies might have been Imitation of Burlesque. I suspect that gay men, young and old, will embrace this glittery mash-up like there’s no tomorrow. It has been a long time since a movie musical has had such an overt, unapologetic gay sensibility. (It’s much gayer than Hairspray, Mamma Mia or Moulin Rouge.) And the hell with the heterosexual movie audiences, driven by the fanboy geeks and their ilk. The comforting familiarity of the movie’s story, setting and that cast clearly marks Burlesque as Ours. After a long dry spell, that’s something worth celebrating—even if it’s half a loaf.
Of related interest: Cher: The Film Collection, newly released on DVD, is a great way for audiences unfamiliar with her film work (Burlesque is her first movie in over a decade) to get to know her. The set, which spans her first forays into movie acting (Good Times and Chastity) also contains her Oscar-nominated performance as the lesbian in love with Meryl Streep in Silkwood; her Oscar win for the blissful romantic comedy Moonstruck; the overlooked but very winning comedy-drama Mermaids; and the lovely WWII drama Tea with Mussolini (essentially, a woman’s picture).
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