THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Top musicals according to readers of IMDB.com:

http://us.imdb.com/Sections/Genres/Musical/average-vote

Rank Title
1 Gol Maal (1979) 8.7/10 (1011 votes)
2 Singin’ in the Rain (1952) 8.4/10 (50781 votes)
3 The Wizard of Oz (1939) 8.2/10 (95106 votes)
4 Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) 8.2/10 (2586 votes)
5 The Lion King (1994) 8.1/10 (120519 votes)
6 The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) 8.1/10 (1327 votes)
7 Duck Soup (1933) 8.1/10 (24318 votes)
8 Arabesk (1989) 8.1/10 (1472 votes)
9 Dasvidaniya (2008) 8.1/10 (1262 votes)
10 A Night at the Opera (1935) 8.0/10 (13519 votes)
11 The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) 8.0/10 (70248 votes)
12 Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001) 8.0/10 (10907 votes)
13 Beauty and the Beast (1991) 8.0/10 (62589 votes)
14 Good News (1947) 7.9/10 (1245 votes)
15 Love Me Tonight (1932) 7.9/10 (1136 votes)
16 The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929) 7.9/10 (1024 votes)
17 Der blaue Engel (1930) 7.9/10 (4757 votes)
18 My Fair Lady (1964) 7.8/10 (26495 votes)
19 The Princess and the Frog (2009) 7.8/10 (3946 votes)
20 Les parapluies de Cherbourg (1964) 7.8/10 (6424 votes)
21 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) 7.8/10 (35248 votes)
22 The Sound of Music (1965) 7.8/10 (48574 votes)
23 A Star Is Born (1954) 7.8/10 (4977 votes)
24 Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) 7.8/10 (5234 votes)
25 Aladdin (1992) 7.8/10 (63727 votes)
26 Dancer in the Dark (2000) 7.8/10 (34165 votes)
27 Cabaret (1972) 7.8/10 (16945 votes)
28 Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) 7.8/10 (5683 votes)
29 The Boy Friend (1971) 7.8/10 (1283 votes)
30 Kiraware Matsuko no isshô (2006) 7.8/10 (1326 votes)
31 42nd Street (1933) 7.7/10 (3959 votes)
32 South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut (1999) 7.7/10 (75242 votes)
33 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) 7.7/10 (43629 votes)
34 Top Hat (1935) 7.7/10 (5648 votes)
35 West Side Story (1961) 7.7/10 (27820 votes)
36 On the Town (1949) 7.7/10 (5515 votes)
37 Show Boat (1936) 7.7/10 (1065 votes)
38 Fiddler on the Roof (1971) 7.7/10 (13433 votes)
39 À nous la liberté (1931) 7.7/10 (1356 votes)
40 The Court Jester (1955) 7.7/10 (5250 votes)
41 The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977) 7.7/10 (4815 votes)
42 Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) 7.7/10 (96094 votes)
43 Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006) 7.7/10 (4774 votes)
44 Footlight Parade (1933) 7.7/10 (1335 votes)
45 Le million (1931) 7.7/10 (1018 votes)
46 Bumbai (1995) 7.7/10 (1415 votes)
47 Swing Time (1936) 7.7/10 (3691 votes)
48 Mary Poppins (1964) 7.7/10 (32128 votes)
49 Don (1978) 7.7/10 (1233 votes)
50 Rangeela (1995) 7.6/10 (1308 votes)

***

Of those I noted and not in the top 50:

7.2 Chicago
6.7 Cadillac Records
6.6 Mamma Mia
6.6 Dreamgirls

I like musicals. I love pop/rock musicals.

BUT Mama Mia was easily the worst film I saw in the previous decade. Embarrassing choreography. Horrendous editing. Awkward acting. And the voice of Pierce Brosnan.

I felt embarrassed for Meryl Streep, who was great of course.

It’s odd that Moulin Rouge! is not on that list, since it has a 7.7 rating on iMDB.

I’m not a huge musical fan, but MR! is my favorite. Chicago was solid. A lot of those movies listed I suppose are musicals, but I don’t always consider them as one for some reason (like Aladdin, which I think more as a Disney movie than a musical, though it’s obviously both).

I’ll say this though: “Grease” is one of those things that makes me want to murder everybody in the room. I can’t take it; I can’t take any of those songs. It’s just horrible for me. I also am one of the only people who just doesn’t get into “Wizard of Oz” at all. The movie is about 100 minutes, but every time I’ve watched it I felt like I was sitting there for six or seven days.

I really want to see Sweeney Todd. I’ve heard some mixed things on it, but the iMDB rating encourages me.

I have had the opportunity to see parts of Mamma Mia on TV.  I was truly shocked by how bad it was; I hadn’t expected it to be my cup of tea, but it is appallingly inept, as Alex says above poorly choreographed and cut, and nearly all the castmembers are asked to embarrass themselves continuously through the film.  I can’t rank it amongst all the films I’ve seen this decade as I haven’t seen it in its entirety and that wouldn’t be fair, but the portions I’ve seen easily are in the bottom 10. 

I mean, I really couldn’t get over how bad it was.  I couldn’t turn away.

Also, Chicago?  Come on.  Actors spend months learning complex choreography and then they shoot and edit it in such a way that you can’t even tell that it’s the actor doing the performance?  The only reason I have to believe that it’s Richard Gere doing the tapdance is that everyone says it was; from the way it’s shot, there is no real evidence that he’s doing most of that dancing.

As for my favorite musical of all time, I’d probably go with The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, with Fiddler on the Roof and The Young Girls of Rochefort also competing.  Most would say Singin’ in the Rain, and while it is a great film, it doesn’t do quite as much for me as those others.  I also enjoy Bye Bye Birdie (the nubile Ann-Margret being no small part of that).

Of recent vintage, of course there is Moulin Rouge!.  I also liked Evita, though many did not (the story does sort of sputter out in the second half), partially because Dharius Khondji’s cinematography so great that the movie plays well even without any sound.

I agree regarding Gere’s tap-dancing.  That was a terrible choice of direction, and I can only conclude that Gere did not do that tapping.

But the “All that jazz” song does it for me.  There were a couple of songs on the Broadway show that didn’t make it to the movie (like Mr Cellaphane) that I thought should have.  But, really, I loved Chicago on Broadway, and the movie version held up extremely well.

For me anyway.

As we see in this thread, musicals have the most divergent of opinions…

Cellophane was in the movie, wasn’t it?

Loved Grease and Chicago, but Mama Mia was awful.  It lasted about 15 minutes on our DVD player at home before it was ejected.
vr, Xei

theres a really good musical number in the oft overlooked SNL skit turned feature length motion picture, “The Ladies Man”. the film also showcases kevin mcdonald in a breathtaking cameo as mail man of questionable talents.

JD--you the man!  The first hour+ of Moulin Rouge is the best musical by FAR, and I liked Chicago a lot.  Mamma Mia?  Clearly the worst musical I’ve ever seen.  Meryl Streep?  Every time she was on the screen I wanted to leave....  And the others in the cast were as bad.

I thought the stage production of Mamma Mia was great, a lot of fun.  The movie paled in comparison to me, but I guess most musicals pack more punch than their movie versions).

Interesting that the IMDB list includes Indian movies. I need to see more of those, including Lagaan, which I’ve heard good things about.  It’s musical and it’s about cricket!

Lagaan is a trip.

For a baseball musical, Take Me Out to the Ballgame (I’m pretty sure it’s Busby Berkeley’s last film, it stars Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, and Esther Williams) is pretty good.  The fun thing about Sinatra and Kelly starring with each other is that (in relative terms) you’ve got one guy who can’t dance and another who can’t sing.

Musicals that get the most play from my iTunes:

1. Jesus Christ Superstar (and from an atheist even!)
2. Once More with Feeling
3. Les Miserables
4. Lion King
5. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat

I figured a sabreblog deserved a statistical answer to this question, so rather than list why I thought my top 5 musicals would be, I consulted my “times played” record on iTunes.  “Once more with Feeling” would probably leap to first place if my iPod kept such records.

oh yeah, i saw Hamlet 2 in theaters, that was pretty funny.  rock my sexy jesus gets play on my itunes.  and of course south park was one of the finest films ever crafted, so thats also probably makes it my favoritest musical ever.  i mean evar.

Fiddler on the Roof is probably #1 for me.

Also like Phantom of the Opera very much.

Dancer in the Dark (Bjork) is #26 in the list above.  Excellent movie, and plenty of singing and some dancing, but not what I’d necessarily call a musical.  If I remember right, every song was performed by Bjork, and the other main actors (David Morse notably) did no singing or dancing.  But, you can strip out all the singing, and you’d still be left with a really good movie.

The only one that I think you need to keep is the last song she sings.  People who saw the movie know what I mean.  (No spoilers.)

"A Hard Day’s Night.” Y’all heard of this group called The Beatles?

I have never seen Mamma Mia, which is why I omitted it. I liked Chicago, and it’s a better movie than some of the titles on my list, but I weighed the music more heavily than plot/performance for that ranking.

Grease ... aside from the terrible message it sends at the end (the girl changes completely for the guy, with no evidence of reciprocation), I just do not like that style of music.

West Side Story for me.