SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

CherryBlossomBoy "Patchiness" is the key word that describes everything related to "Jesus Christ Superstar" ever since the source material has been written. The Gospels are patchy piece of literature with an incoherent, anecdotal story of a Messiah. Tim Rice's libretto is a patchy attempt to give an earthly, plausible explanation of events that transpired, by applying a socio-psychological angle. Worthy and useful as it is, it still leaves gaping holes in motivation of protagonists. Patchy is, also, Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical score, ranging from repetitive pieces oblivious to demands of libretto to brilliantly poignant airs and duets that lean on best works of Romantisicm.Of course, with such foundation, no iteration of actual staging of this rock opera can ever be anything else but - patchy. Such was the 1970's concept album, the 1973's Norman Jewison's film, my 1993's high-school enactment and, obviously, this version updated for "21st century". There will never be a "definitive" version and every one will have it's downfalls, spikes of brilliance and everything in between. Directors will struggle to give it a proper setting, focus and rhythm, actors will struggle to squeeze a plausible and emotional performance out of at times wanting melodies and lyrics.So how does this "21st century" attempt fare in the eyes of this fan? I found it to be intriguing and done well enough, considering my initial skepticism and inevitable comparison with Jewison's cinematic work. There are "goods", "bads" and "inbetweens". Inbetweens first: the setting. Giving it a modern look is okay. Nothing of novelty, but nothing wrong with it either. Zealots are freedom fighters armed with assault rifles, Romans are Nazis in leather outfits, Jewish high priesthood is a board of directors. Getting back to staging indoors is also passable since it's all about mimicking MTV videos (mainly shot in studios), but it would benefit from using real locations (just like Jewison's film did) - it's more engaging for the viewer. Minor revisions of libretto were also useful although not very necessary.The "goods" are, most of all, Fred Johanson as Pontius Pilate with his mesmerizing baritone and an imposing presence; and the direction. Gale Edwards and Nick Morris gave it all they could in trying to visually plug the holes left by the script(ure), much like Jewison, but they even did one better on some occasions throughout the film. Frederick B. Owens and Renée Castle are very good in their roles (Caiphas and Mary Magdalene, respectively), not as much in the way of standing out as in the way of not messing up their parts. Unfortunately that's not that could be said for the rest of the cast.Which brings me to the "bads", which is - the rest of the cast. Jérôme Pradon as Judas should have at least been given a wig. The receding hairline, coupled with the sinister facial expression, made him look unnecessarily unsympathetic. The actor himself didn't seem too sure where to go with his character so he went all over the place. So did his singing. But he did seem enthusiastic about the role and the role of Judas is most volatile of all so whatever he does is at least passable. Rik Mayall with his gargling voice should never have been a part of any musical production. As good an actor as he is, he can't sing, nor even fake singing, even if it's a vaudeville number, that is king Herod's part. Michael Shaeffer as Annas is only interesting for being fashioned after Pinhead from Hellraiser, minus the pins. The pitch of his voice is irritating and so are the sudden switching of octaves for no good reason. Interpretations, or taking liberties with melodies and phrasing, turned out to be stumbling blocks for most, ending up in mangling melodies and rhythm more often than not.Interesting to watch but still the biggest flop of all is Glenn Carter as Jesus Christ. A flop not for his lack of talents, but for inability to carry the biggest burden: the one of playing the title role. Here is the "why": whatever liberties other characters are allowed to have with their interpretations, Jesus' part has to be done pretty much straightforward in order for everything to work. He has to go through the motions of emanating authority, wisdom, solemness, doubts, fear and suffering in that order, much like he did in the Gospels. He is traveling predestined, unwavering path while people around him are set to fall apart, puzzled about what he is supposed to be and mean. Ted Neeley once set the bar for that kind of performance and every aspiring Jesus Christ must come damn close to it or fail. Glenn carter failed. His vocal technique falls apart in heights which are crucial to his melodies. He can reach them alright, but lacks the power while up there, or at least a pleasant pitch. His acting is insecure and lacking in energy, which some other reviewers confused with "subtle". He is not all bad, has some moments while expressing solemness and suffering, but all in all he's just not Jesus Christ Superstar. Most of the entertainment coming from his role is watching him struggle.In summary, a pretty decent and courageous iteration of a classic, despite the flaws I zealously counted. Now that I finally discovered it, I'll be sure to recheck it in the future.

Troll_Dahl First of all, I really want to say that I'm not in the "let's hate on Jerome Pradon" gang. Pradon has taken some fire for his portrayal of Judas but I really think the vitriol is undeserved in many cases. Pradon's voice and approach are different to the classic Carl Anderson portrayal l but their supposed to be. Give him a chance. In my opinion, Pradon gives a Judas who is conflicted, torn, twisted, pained, and pent up. You really need to watch his performance, and watch it carefully, to get the full effect of his characterization. He doesn't belt it out like Carl Anderson, but the fact that this is musical theatre at least as much as rock doesn't bother me, though it obviously niggles some. Nonetheless on their own, his vocals wouldn't be earth- shattering, although I quite enjoy hearing the hints of French in his enunciation and the soft yet still rock-tinged and sometimes edgy European sound about them, but when you watch him, Pradon is a born actor. He acts every sung line and his physical/visual performance is wonderful.There's comedy but there's also drama and angst in his performance. He makes Judas human and multi-dimensional. He does tend to wail when singing but nonetheless, The Last Supper is amazing at times in terms of emotional delivery as is the moment of betrayal. The connection between Judas and Jesus in that moment could not have been more effective. Judas ' Death is painful--but it's meant to be. The staging when Judas is alone singing I Don't Know How to Love Him is beautiful-- filled with primal emotion. Judas is splayed on the floor, looking almost like he himself is being crucified at one point. And the staging of Superstar, the title number, is really interesting in this production. It's just a completely different approach to the song and the vocals. That sequence, along with Pradon's version of Damned for All Time/Blood money are phenomenal and it's largely down to Jerome Pradon, who makes the character his own in a totally unique way. Let him not be Carl. He's Jerome. Let this be Jerome's Judas; don't demand that it be Carl's or Murray Head's.Otherwise, this production of Superstar is eye-catching, visually engrossing, and representative of a complete vision in its staging. Its setting leaps to life with a postmodern production design including broad strokes of distopic imagery. The back wall is covered in graffiti. Starting with a great close-up of a graphitized "HATE", much of the Overture is spent in close-up shots and pans across the wall, allowing us to really take in the designs. I find this device fascinating. It gives us a powerful sense of this story's setting; the life and times of the characters. The setting in this production carries an environment of heightened reality.Glenn Carter has a strong voice and is generally solid as Jesus. Other highlights include Fred Johanson's Pilate and Michael Schaeffer's Annas. The former is a striking new characterization, painting Pilate as a weak man in the guise of a strong one, a man who seems to view his role to be as much that of a showman as a governor and who lives in terror of losing the people's support. Annas is remarkable just for being a perfectly detestable villain.Drawing parallels with sociopolitical dynamics of today, disciples are portrayed as l revolutionaries rebelling against the Roman Empire. In this production, the segment beginning with Hosanna and moving directly into Simon's song perfectly exemplifies why Judas fears the "Jesus movement" is beyond anyone's control and is dangerous.There's an interesting moment immediately after I Don't Know how to Love him. Pradon's Judas catches Mary about to kiss Jesus, who is asleep. It does show the nastier smug side of this Judas that some people really don't like, but what's interesting to me is that the moment is played entirely with visuals, set to that fantastic piece of Lloyd Webber scoring that leads into Damned for All Time.Judas, Mary, and Jesus (who awakes on Judas' arrival) express their feelings only through their facial expressions. You can see the wheels turning in characters' heads from moment to moment. The intense lighting on Judas as we see a change come over him is the perfect finishing touch.This sequence captures what I like most about this production of Superstar, along with its emotional depth and three-dimensional character treatments: through visual abstraction, it paints an intense hyper-reality that represents characters' feelings and actions more than it directly shows them at times. Through its visuals, it is at times akin to visual poetry or a cousin to ballet. In Judas' Death the noose is lowered onto to the stage by unseen hands, presenting itself to him. During Blood Money, Judas crawls from the priests in a futile attempt to escape fate and Jesus later does the same, crawling desperately from the crowd baying for his blood as Pilate gives the death sentence.This Superstar is visually stunning at times in a way completely different to the equally powerful cinematic rendition. It uses a unique medium of visual storytelling to convey drama in a uniquely compelling way. Watch the final moments, as Jesus' body is placed on the stage. Gradually, the characters depart until only Judas and Mary, the two other key players, are looking on. And Judas fittingly does witness and feel the Crucifixion in this version even though he is dead. Judas and Mary, who have been stretched with tension throughout the story, stand together over Christ's body. This is a portrait of the characters and emotional journey of the play. It is poetry composed by moving people on a live canvas. It is visual and kinesthetic poetry. In short, it is theatre.

fedorafreak-1 I really am stupefied by the amount of people who claim to be 'longtime fans' of the original 1973 performance that actually PREFER this ridiculously terrible movie.Let's ignore, for a moment, the poor casting decisions that may have been made. Let's ignore the fact that Judas didn't have the voice for Judas, that Jesus didn't have the range for Jesus, and that nearly every attempt made to add vibrato to any character's voice ended up sounding more like a car going over road bumps.After all, compared to the rest of the movie, that's relatively minor stuff.Let's start on what they did with the Judas character. In JC '73, Judas is a principled man who loves Jesus as much if not more than the rest of the disciples. He is not a bad man by any stretch. Rather, he is a sort of tragic protagonist. He betrays Jesus in an attempt to save the rest of them: indeed, reading slightly between the lines, it is completely obvious that Jesus intended him to do so. Despite this fact, the guilt of what he'd done caused him to hang himself. In '73, Judas was -a good man-. He was a character that you could love, sympathize with, understand, and pity. In his final song, he descends (dressed as an angel) from heaven.In 2000, Judas is a leather-jacket wearing jerk that punches women, punches Jesus, licks Mary in the face for no apparent reason but to make her unhappy, and is really just an all- around creep. This makes it all the more strange when he suddenly becomes the conflicted character, because the lines call for it: one almost gets the feeling that he's just pretending to be a principled person so that people won't hate him. You can almost see the look of glee on his face when he finds out that he can cause a stir over the ointment for Jesus' feet. When he wails about "being spattered with innocent blood," one gets the feeling more that he is concerned what history will think of him, than what has happened to Jesus. When he says "to think I admired you, well now I despise you," he MEANS it... and one wonders how far back the "admired" part refers to. Certainly before the show begins, because he seems to despise Jesus the entire play.Oh, by the way: in his final song in THIS rendition, he is dressed purely in red, amidst lights that resemble flames, surrounded by chorus-girls dressed in red, singing rudely in Jesus' face as he carries his cross. At one point, he stands on TOP of the cross, pinning Jesus to the ground as he sings spitefully at him.Gee, I wonder what THAT'S supposed to represent.Just this would have been enough for me to hate the movie: the defense of the actions of Judas Iscariot was one of the things I found the most powerful about JC: S.However, I'll briefly go over a few more things.1: Jesus Christ was, to put it politely, a sissy. A complete, total sissy. He does not portray a strong leader. He does not portray a holy figure. He is 100% unadulterated wuss. One might read this as a clever attempt to portray the emo subculture that has developed in these modern times, but I prefer to view it as overblown and ridiculous. 2: The Pharisees, much like what was done with Judas, are portrayed not just as bad men, but evil men.3: Pilate was written to be a fair and just man that ended up sentencing Jesus to his fate mostly because (a) he understood that Jesus was planning on becoming a martyr, and (b) he was afraid of the mob. Pilate was portrayed in this version as being a bad man... which (similar to various scenes with Judas) made it very awkward when he defended Jesus before the mob.4: Simon's "You Get The Power And The Glory" scene: what. the. hell. Simon Zealotes is urging Jesus to "add a touch of hate at Rome" to his sermons to incite the mob against the Romans IMMEDIATELY AFTER a giant melee with Roman soldiers. While Simon is trying to convince Jesus to direct the mob to overthrow the Roman oppressors, the mob is already toting machine guns, fresh back at the sermon after kicking some Roman backside. It just makes no SENSE.I literally could go on for hours and hours about every little thing I hated about this movie. There was not a single voice stronger than the character's counterpart in '73. The acting, far from being "superior" to that in '73, is overblown, unconvincing, and stupid. The characters have been slaughtered. The POINT of the musical has been slaughtered. One of the greatest things about JC: S is how well it portrays the various shades of gray in the characters and events, and JC: S 2000 is purely, wholly black and white.I cannot comprehend in my wildest dreams how so many people that claim to be long-time fans of this play/movie could POSSIBLY prefer this over the original.At all.Were there a 0 star option, I would choose it.

v-lanza I've never seen such a moving musical. I had already seen the movie with Ted Neely and Carl Anderson, but this show is more intense, more passionate and more exciting too. The majority of people consider Judas as the worst species of traitor, I should suggest them to watch this musical... If Judas hadn't kissed Jesus, now our Catholic History would be very different... But has anyone thought about Judas' sufferings? He betrays because this is his Destiny, the Destiny God assigned him. Jerome Pradon is absolutely wonderful, not only his voice, but also all his gestures and expressions. He made me laugh, he made me move, he made me feel sorrow and pain. He's extraordinary. I love him. And Jesus/Glenn Carter is as fantastic as him. Jesus loved Judas, one of his Twelve Chosen, and he knows that he must betrays, or His Father's will wouldn't be accomplished. But how painful is! Absolutely marvellous.