The Musical Film Review – Musical Mayhem

The Musical is a dark comedy that owes its best laughs to an unhinged main character but is dragged down by an inability to say as much as it wants to with him.

The Musical sees middle school theater teacher Doug Leibowitz (Will Brill, of Caught Stealing) struggling to get his big break as a playwright. Not only have his career prospects failed, but he discovers that his coworker and ex-girlfriend (Gillian Jacobs, of Invincible) is now dating the school’s Principal Brady (Rob Lowe, of The Outsiders). What to do with all this pent-up frustration? Sabotage Brady’s bid for the Blue Ribbon of Academic Excellence by turning the planned school musical into a display of bad taste and inappropriateness, of course.

All I’ll say about the play itself is that it involves two buildings… I think most can connect the dots from there. But really, the collar-tugging discomfort doesn’t come as much from the titular musical as just watching Leibowitz be the smallest, pettiest, most sniveling little weasel you’ll ever see. The sheer audacity of him going this far solely to spite one person makes said pettiness readily apparent, but Will Brill dials his performance up to eleven to drill the fact home.

You all probably know the kind of drama teacher who takes their productions way too seriously and over-directs the kids to obnoxious degrees. This is that teacher in his worst possible form, and a lot of the film’s humor comes from watching him take out every single personal frustration on people who just want to amicably get on with their lives, or children who clearly have a million questions running through their heads as their teacher screams at them about hopelessness and the death of dreams.

Granted, we never know whether his work is actually any good or if the people who could give him great opportunities are so myopic that they can’t recognize his brand of talent. But while the latter scenario is certainly legitimate in real life, it seems pretty clear that no one this mentally damaged would write something worth praising. What’s funnier is that he’s so up his own a*s about his own importance that he gets wrapped up in the “weight” and “importance” of the fake musical that he’s deliberately creating for revenge. Even that must be perfect in his head.

The look of The Musical is just as cold, inhuman, and frantic. It’s very muddled and grey in a way that’s clearly deliberate but still may be an eyesore for some. Overly dramatic zoom-ins and suspenseful still shots are humorously plentiful as well, to a degree you’d more expect in a straight-up thriller about a crazed psychopath… Which isn’t too far off. Hell, in my favorite shot of the movie, Leibowitz looks far more like a mad scientist than a teacher with a grudge.

As for the musical itself, yeah, there’s definitely a lot of cringing (like, actual cringing, not in the overused slang sense) to be had in the buildup. Even though it’s not as lengthy as, say, the climactic musical of The Producers, it gets the point across that Leibowitz is so focused on his own sense of privilege that he’s willing to exploit real, much more important pain and trauma without batting an eye. The reaction is especially rich from Rob Lowe, who channels a bit of his character from Parks and Recreation for a chipper, hypersensitive, affable yet slightly clueless performance.

However, The Musical also wants to comment on modern-day political correctness. Brief mention is made by Brady of Gone with the Wind regarding its inappropriate racial depictions. (He must not have noticed how awful the white people are in that movie.) One of the kids is upset that she’s being passed over for a Latina role in favor of a white classmate, which becomes a recurring plot point. The fourth-wall-adjacent humor here is obvious: the movie is addressing how aware people are of “bad taste” as it prepares to flaunt bad-taste subject matter for the sake of a punchline.

But because that is indeed the film’s ultimate endgame, you then start to wonder how much it really buys into its own ponderings over P.C. culture and, more concerningly, whether it wants us to think Leibowitz has some legitimate points amid his madness. Yes, many corners of culture have gotten too sensitive, too used to their safe spaces, and too ignorant of context when it comes to things not “aging well.” 

I love seeing these groups mocked and taken down a peg as much as the next guy, but The Musical’s attempts at doing so are so stock and thinly layered that they only serve to muddle any greater point it’s trying to make with Leibowitz as a character. The kids in the movie certainly seem to buy whatever he’s selling, especially in a final act of what I guess is meant to be catharsis but really just answers the question of what if Dead Poets Society made you wince instead of cry. 

Oh yeah, that’s another problem you may have thought about: how would an entire class of middle schoolers be stupid enough to go along with this whole scheme? They know what their new play is about, and they surely must know why it would be hurtful… And yet none of them choose to bow out? Even with Leibowitz’s spiels about his noble intent and why they need to keep it a surprise, at least one kid must have the most basic common sense to tell a parent or principal, “Hey, this is really, really bad.”

Call it suspension of disbelief if you want, but The Musical seems to try and bite off more than it can chew, especially when it all comes in just shy of 90 minutes. Which, granted, means it’ll at least be over quickly if you find yourself not clicking with anything in the movie. As for me, this is an often very funny comedy when the humor comes from the antics of its punching bag of a main character. When The Musical has the guts to say that sometimes people with broken dreams simply don’t deserve those dreams, it’s at its best.

When The Musical then tries to have a more “nuanced” discussion about wider art and culture, it doesn’t work out as well. And that’s on top of the stretches it already needs to get its base idea going. So, even now, it’s hard to know exactly what to think of the film. It’s worth at least one watch for what a humorously off-putting experience it is, but I don’t see even some of its defenders demanding an encore afterwards.

The Musical is now available to watch in select US theaters.