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Film Curious is a movie review podcast that takes a step back from the constant media consumption to discover and ponder great films across genres and time. A podcast where we let our intrigue guide us and are not afraid to explore whatever films pique our interest.
To all you film lovers, casual theatergoers, at-home movie watchers, and streaming scrollers out there, think of Film Curious as your gateway into any and every kind of movie. One that doesn’t gatekeep but doesn’t shy away from respect for the craft either. So, take a dip, the water’s fine…
Hey guys, welcome
to Film Curious, the podcast
that takes a step back from the constant
media consumption to discover and ponder
great films across genres and time.
We're always watching new things,
so we're going to try
to keep you up to date on
not only the most recent
in-theater experiences we have,
but what's newish to streaming as well.
Because let's face it,
not everything is getting a
theatrical release these days,
and if they do, a lot of times
it's not going to be for very long.
This episode, Pete's giving you
a brief review of the film stage
production of the Broadway musical Merrily
We Roll Along on Netflix,
so consider this a kind of midweek
mini review to give you something
to watch before the weekend.
Thanks for tuning
in and we hope you enjoy.
It all right.
So yeah, I want to talk about, Merrily
We Roll Along.
This was the recent
I think it was like 20, 25.
The, stage adaptation,
new stage
presentation of the Sondheim musical
and starring Daniel Radcliffe,
Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez.
So this is now on Netflix,
so it's relatively very easy to have.
You have a Netflix account,
you can watch it.
You sure you can rent it
somewhere else as well?
I did not see this on the stage
when it played.
I had never seen it previously,
and I've really had minor interaction
with this musical overall
when it first came out
back in the original run,
early 80s, maybe even late 70s,
it wasn't a success.
It's a lot of sound home ones.
As it grew on, it just gained
more of a fan club and more love.
So they put this out and the number
one thing to take away from it,
despite the secondary saying
that I'm going to bring up the chemistry
between the three leads is undeniable.
They're all fantastic.
It's it's wild to see
how much Radcliffe
has grown into like this
other career post.
You know, it's hard to be Harry Potter
in those movies in the ways
that they were so popular
and find a career afterwards.
And he's.
Yeah, I think, part of his success
is that he just doesn't
he kind of like, forgot
all those big movie days.
And it just seems like he leans into
what interests him.
And I think that's like
what's worked for him is he just
does whatever weird or indie thing
he wants to do.
And I think that that's kind of
what's made, made it easier to delineate,
you know,
his Harry Potter days from his adult work.
Yeah.
And he's done a run on Broadway
shows lately,
which is, you know, fantastic,
because that's going to get him into
so many more opportunities
and so many different
stories to tell and jump back and forth.
And, you know, you get to do,
you know, you can do something
slightly different every night.
But that's what this isn't now. Right?
So this is merrily
we were long kind of locks in a play
into a version, into a performance,
which is great.
What I don't like about it
is the camera on, on a lot of occasions
there's a very there's a very plus side
and a very negative side.
There's a ton almost
everything is a tight shot, like
three quarters, not like and close ups,
like there's a lot of close ups too,
but there's a lot of three quarters
and it's it kind of feels
suffocating a little bit.
Sometimes when you think of
when you think of what is happening
on the stage, you just sort of want to you
wish they would take a step back.
Visually.
Now I understand why they did it,
because, you know,
I'd ask you is
if I could do an a questionnaire.
What's something that you don't maybe
get to see?
And a Broadway play, depending on
how much money you spent on your seat.
Yeah.
You're not gonna say
the facial expressions a lot of the time.
Exactly.
You're not going to see the minute
facial expressions.
You get to experience all of that here.
What you don't get to expect
to get to experience, though,
is the stage experience.
So I kind of want these to lay
right in the middle.
I want to I want to be able to explore
that's, you know, the tightness
of some shots a little bit.
But then I want to move back.
There's a musical sequence
with the three of them.
If you don't if you're not familiar
with the way that the
the show works out, the play works out,
you're going backwards in time,
and you're seeing them
essentially at their worst
and then working backwards
to when they first met.
And they're at their best.
You can also argue that they're not
at their best in the very beginning,
and it's somewhere in the middle
and the whole point of the show is,
what is it
that sets them on a different trajectory?
Because it's not just one thing,
it's it's so many different things,
so many small things,
so many large things.
And that's really the fun for the,
you know,
the the, the,
the whole point of the play. So
it's great to
be able to see these, these little moments
because I'll tell you,
Groff in particular, it's spectacular
at those little moments in this show,
these very slight, just like turns
and looks at Radcliffe's
character in particular.
They are songwriters together
who have, drifted apart.
But there's a scene,
but the three of them, Lindsay
Mendez, Grass and Radcliffe.
And in the play,
it's like once across in the center,
Radcliffe is to, the right.
If you're facing this stage and Mendez
is to the left and you never see them in
a wide screen shot with the three of them
to get, like, the feel of the stage.
You get Radcliffe and Groff in one shot,
and then Mendez alone,
which is technically correct
because the two of them are in one
room and she's in her own.
But there's the fun of how
you see it on the stage,
and you'd never get to experience it.
And that happens in a lot of scenes.
Then there's some very weird
decisions on editing.
One of the characters, Gussie,
Gussie Carnegie,
she's played by Krystal Joy Brown.
There's a number of lines where
you should stick with her,
and they cut away.
One of them is is very strange.
Where her, her husband
in the middle of the show and towards.
Yeah, the middle of the show.
Jo Jo, who plays, Reg,
she's like their producer in many ways.
He's married to her at some point,
but then they separate.
And while he is
struggling with this later life of,
you know, not having very much money
and having to borrow money,
there's a moment where the two of them
interact and she gives him some money,
and then she walks away to go
to, like, you know, her apartment
and the camera stays on him super tight,
and she's in the background
and you can't really see her.
She's out of focus
and she stops and is looking at him.
But you cannot see at all, like
the expression or anything on her face.
And then she continues to start walking,
and then it cuts back to her
as like her back is to the camera.
And she's walking away.
And I was like, was such a strange choice.
And then I saw it happen
a couple of more times, just in
little moments where I would stay on her
if I had the choice.
Anyways, I brought this up
to a friend of mine who loves this play
and they were like,
oh, I have something to show you.
And they sent me.
It was a post that she had put up on
Instagram, I believe it was Instagram.
And she and the actress was like,
hey, I just finally got a chance to see
Marilyn.
It a long, long.
It's very weird to see yourself
get cut out at such
little tiny moments,
you know, handed around.
And I was like,
oh, okay, I'm not going crazy.
So it's a little strange.
So that aside, though,
the whole thing with the
the ultra closeness and
and really just bad, bad editing around
one of the central characters of
that has a massive impact
on these three characters.
I fully enjoyed this, but man,
I wish they'd just backed up a little bit,
so absolutely watch it.
I think it's well worth your time.
Radcliffe, I would say
steals the show with,
the song ink.
Oh my God, what's what's,
what's his name?
Let me look this up super quick.
Franklin Shepherd ink,
which that song is maybe like a half
hour or so into the play.
It steals the
movie, steals the whole thing right there.
It's incredible.
Very Sondheim type song
where Radcliffe has to speak
at a thousand miles an hour.
While delivering this song.
So. Yeah, merrily, long, long.
I want to see more.
We're seeing more of this.
You know, obviously, it depends on
how successful the show is and all that.
But getting, plays
that were limited runs,
which every play is a limited run
except, you know, very, very few musicals
that live forever
and all that kind of stuff.
I think it's important for people
to be able to see it,
who would never get a chance to see it
otherwise.
Although you can
if you ever go to the New York Library,
you can actually watch
almost any Broadway show
that's ever been put on,
because they've almost all been filmed.
And you can watch it.
I think what's and they kind of have like
a record of who's who's watched what.
So you could actually do that as well.
But I, I hope we keep seeing this.
Obviously, the success of Hamilton
was was one of these.
And now we have Mary Lee real long
which was supposed to be a movie shot
also like four years ago with Paul Mescal.
I have no idea what ever happened to that.
But yeah, check out Merrily
We Roll Along on Netflix.
But just keep in mind stage.
Let it be a stage. You can do both.
I, you know, we want to present it
as a dramatic thing, give you a,
an experience you would never get
in the theater, which it does give you.
But there's only maybe I have
4 or 5 moments where we actually see
the stage, for what it is.
And funny enough,
one of them is with that actress
who gets kind of cut in in weird ways,
because she's alone, on stage,
and they go to an ultra wide
because there's a show lighting
going around.
But I found it
again, a little odd. How?
Oh, now we use a wide shot
when it's only one person.
Strange, but.
Yeah, check it out. Really worth it.
Jonathan Groff is fantastic.
Lindsay Mendez is the emotional glue
that keeps the two of them together
and, you know, drives the show.
But fuck me, Radcliffe is so good.
So Hazel has all of that.
And everyone involved at that stage,
everything.
All the actors and actresses.
Well done.
Sondheim would have would have done that.
It's like.
Yeah, I'll definitely be checking it out.
I just didn't have the the time
before we recorded to to watch it.
But yeah, there's,
there's an interesting thing
now that where you, as you were saying,
like we're going to be seeing more
filming of, stage productions.
I mean, you Marvel. Yeah,
yeah.
But, there
is something that will be interesting
to see as,
like as they gain popularity, are,
are they going to be over or like because,
you know, it's not a film, right?
You kind of do have to acknowledge that
you are filming a stage production here.
So okay, I don't know if you,
you really want them to be overproduced
because at a certain point
it's like, well, then,
well then it's a make it a film. And
I can I can give you an example
of what I would say
is that perfect middle
ground, the tragedy in Macbeth.
Where you could not.
You probably could, you might be able
to pull off the production of that movie
on a stage, but it's absolutely shot
as if it was a production on the stage.
But it feels like a movie.
It is, it is a really a unicorn.
In that sense I warn it's not in
my and I can't recall another one, but,
yeah,
that that would be one where I would say.
Lives
right there in the middle, successfully.
And unfortunately,
it's doesn't have a physical release.
I really hope it gets one
one of these days.
I got I want to see that in,
you know, uncompressed
4K on my TV and not have to have
a goddamn subscription to Apple.
So there's no there's
no physical off the tragedy of Macbeth.
What?
No, there is not.
That's wild. Yeah. It sucks.
That is. It sucks.
That is out of control.
Apple. What is going on?
My hope is everything
eventually winds up a criterion.
Like that's where my brain lives.
I'm like, dammit,
just make this on criterion.
You know,
they've done Coen Brothers, even though
it's have the Coen brothers on that one.
I think it's just Joel Coen,
who worked on that one?
Yeah.
That's my distant hope
is that's where it eventually happens.
Yeah.
Is that, you know, physical media stuff
that you never thought
would get a sucker for, like, troll two
has a 4K release.
Suck it.
Yeah,
I. Guess. Cause I guess because they.
I mean, hey,
because there is a market for it, and
you don't have to overproduce that disc
because you know that that market
is sort of like in this pocket, right?
And don't forget 35 millimeter.
I think, you know,
if you were to technically scan it
and scan it and scan it again so you could
give it a resolution, it's like six K.
So 4K isn't even the full picture of what,
35 as possible.
And and shit, what you talk about,
you know, 70 millimeter Uber
we're up to like 1112 K, which imagine
a film looked three times
clearer and larger at your home.
That's why.
Yeah,
you probably would need a, projector,
though.
You'd have to have, like,
large space, too, because.
Yeah,
I will say that there, it's not a lot,
but there are some films where I'm like,
it does not
your your TV at like,
I have a 65, we have a 65 inch.
It's like it doesn't
capture the grandness of.
Imagine. You know the the theater.
Imagine Ashley of 20 years ago
heard you say
the 65 inch
just isn't really capturing the size.
Meanwhile, we were like 500 pounds Sony
because that was 32in
that we were pushing upstairs and.
I didn't think anything of it.
I yeah, you were like,
this thing is fucking huge.
Yeah I.
Yeah.
By the way, that that visual
that does an actual thing that I had to do
once, I owned a
it was like a 32 inch, Sony Vega.
That thing weighed hundreds of pounds.
And me and my father and my friend Brian,
we actually got planks of wood
and laid it on the stairs and then pushed
that TV up the stairs.
You were behind it.
You're pushing?
Yeah, we were. Looking at it.
Yeah. Yeah, we were. Yeah. And we.
That's not, Yeah.
We could not lift it
and get it into the house safely.
So that was what we had
because it did like the one that we had
didn't come up with the full box
anyways, I will always remember that.
And then thinking this TV now lives
here, it will never be moved.
And I
think it did stay there until we moved.
So it is while the progress we have made.
Yeah. And now yeah.
Now I'm a, I'm a snob of like when we,
we were buying another TV
for another room,
I was like, I cannot it has to be an old.
I can not go back.
Oh no. Sitting here, sitting here.
Like such a snobby like, nope.
This like, I like watching movies
at a friend's house or something,
or a sister's house.
Like a short.
I'm like, this is.
I was like, I cannot,
I cannot possibly watch this movie.
And this quality.
That's that's like.
Come down, just watch the movie.
With no, no, no, no as things that I like.
Eating but like, you can enjoy a movie.
Yeah sure. You can get in 4K.
But it won't.
That won't be happening in my house. Okay.
That's true. I mean, yeah.
I'm say
I have to travel a lot for work,
so like I have to deal with motion
sucking, blah, blah blah horseshit
being on every TV
that I see because I'm in hotels
and you can't change that.
They took away those remotes.
Yeah, but hey, life is short, man.
Okay, yourself going online?
Why not go?
God knows what'll happen next, right?
Let's.
Hey, guys.
Ashley here.
Thanks for listening to film. Curious
if you enjoyed this episode.
There's plenty more to come.
I'll be reviewing new theatrical releases
and new streaming as much as possible,
so make sure to subscribe
wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks again! See you real soon!