West Side Story: Movie Review

Fan of traditional musical play? One thing is for sure, I'm not one of them.

Musical play/movies for me is boring, I always feel sleepy watching it, I don't pay attention to it, and it does not fascinate me. In general, musical type of movies won't be in my top 10 all time favorite movie list.

Our film criticism professor played this 1960's movie entitled West Side Story in our class. Well, unfortunately, its musical, the first few scenes bothered me, no, I mean it annoyed me. But I got no choice but to watch it. So I tried to go over it, tried to understand the story, tried to connect the plot of the film, I ended up watching the whole movie.

But guess what? As I watch the movie, it started to get in to my thoughts, I was thinking that this movie is kinda attractive, it slowly got my attention, and I told myself, 'Im loving this movie', its kinda funny 'coz i really hate musical movies, but I have to face the fact that I'm loving it.

Well this movie revolves between two group of gangsters, The Jets, the American group, and The Sharks, which are the Puerto Ricans that recently moved in to the jets' place.

I like the way both nationalities were represented, you can really determine who were the Americans and the Puerto Ricans, you can tell which group are new, and those who truly owned the place. The old place of the father of Tony, the co-founder of the jets, is a clear manifestation that the whole place was The Jets' territory and The Sharks are just new comers.

I like how they mixed up musical, action, and love in this story, it is a perfect recipe for a great movie. perhaps that what made me to like the movie, because it is not like those typical kind of musical movies where you can only find songs and love stories, I hate those type of movies, but West Side Story is a truly winner.

About the musical scoring, I can't say that it is bad, because maybe it is the best musical scoring that they can have that time, but still, it made thrilling moments, more thrilling, it made sweet moments sweeter. I can't critic much on their capabilities that time, but given with the resources and technicalities that time, I can say that it is the best that they can have.

But what strikes me the most, is that this movie is not all about boastful, prideful, and arrogant men, West Side Story made women more dominant than men, I'm not saying literally, but somehow they showed that women has that power over men. Just like how they portrayed Maria towards Tony, it was clearly shown that He is willing to turn his back away from The Jets just to be with Maria, and that's the power that I'm saying that women has that might overpower men.

I like to commend the movie for not focusing the story for all men.

In general, I can say that this movie is a 4/5, I liked the story, I liked the way they mixed it all up, this is a first musical movie that fascinated me. Kudos to the brains of it!