So, remember that little Disney window I talked about with The Rocketeer, where they skewed for live-action and slightly more adult? This was part of that movement. This was just the part that was a terrible idea.

Let me tell you, this movie firmly deserves to end up on the WNT side of Questionable Taste Theatre. This would be true on its own merits; the fact that, during my middle and high school years, the teachers of three schools in three different states ALL had this as their default sick-day movie, cements the deal. THREE STATES, you guys. I have seen this movie approximately eight hundred times. It pretty much turned me off live musicals forever, and it wasn’t even one. Nice job, movie.

The worst part, though, is that I’ve been Brave New Worlded into knowing most of the lyrics. If some stranger shouts, “Try Bottle Alley or the Harbor!” I would shout back without thinking, “Try Central Park, it’s guaranteed!” I can never un-know what I know, don’t you understand?

It’s a fine life, carrying the bannah!

I never saw Newsies when it was just around (my weird kid musical of choice was a cable-TV version of Alice in Wonderland where Alice learns the alphabet backwards, which I have never found again, as per usual). It was only ever inflicted on me by teachers. The worst of these teacher offenders was my AP American History teacher, who made us watch this four times in one year. Unfortunately, when we got to the test, there was no question about the Agile Newsboys’ Strike of 1899, so it was all a waste.

I think the punishing level of exposure to this movie has burned out any goodwill I might have had, but even if I had had some goodwill, the movie itself is an overly-twee, occasionally-violent, super-homoerotic, badly-acted, badly-sung musical with a lot of breakdancing moves incorporated into group routines, and a six-minute shot of Christian Bale singing on a horse. (It’s as bad as it sounds.)

Apparently this movie was originally pitched as a straight-up drama, and Disney decided to make it a musical to get the girls into the theatres to watch a couple of hours of clean-cut, fake-bad-boys sing and dance badly. (It was a dry run of the Jonas Brothers, basically. That Disney is a well-oiled machine!)

Weirdly, I don’t think Christian Bale even hit the celebrity radar from this movie, which is partly because the movie sank like a stone, but even so, you think he would have been promoted more, even if it was just an attempt to get butts in the seats. Wither thy photo shoots, o Tiger Beat?

I suspect that in the end, Bale might have been a little old for the target demographic. He certainly spends most of the movie acting like a sexually-frustrated 29-year-old stuck in a clerical job. (No, seriously, watch the movie and tell me I’m wrong.)

Here, he attends a burlesque! Kind of a strange moment to put in a movie marketed to young women, but still better than the stripping mouse from Great Mouse Detective. Progress?

Unlike many of the movies I see, which are unrelentingly terrible, I think I understand why some people might like the movie. I ‘m sure it helps to not have been constantly exposed to it in middle and high school, when the musical-theatre wannabes (who would later become my Musical Theatre Neighbors) would sing along “under their breaths” to prove how awesome they were. (Fact: they were, in fact, half a step flat at all times. Good luck being awesome, people with tin ears!)

But frankly, they lost me with the opening group number, with the exception of the awesome Nun Interlude, something all musicals should have:

There’s a lot of pelvic thrusting in this opening number, DISNEY.