THE STORY – When a frustrated playwright and middle school theater teacher finds out his ex-girlfriend has started dating his nemesis, the school’s principal, he decides to ruin the principal’s chances of winning the Blue Ribbon of Academic Excellence.
THE CAST – Will Brill, Gillian Jacobs & Rob Lowe
THE TEAM – Giselle Bonilla (Director) & Alexander Heller (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 84 Minutes
So, you’ve just found out your on-a-break situationship has ditched you for your nemesis. What is a man supposed to do? Well, if you’re high school drama teacher Doug (Will Brill) in “The Musical,” you stage a totally unhinged Sept. 11 school musical to get back at those who wronged you. Yes, you read that correctly. Director Giselle Bonilla shows us exactly what happens when white men choose to do anything other than go to therapy in this part-comedy, part-revenge film, which has shades of “School of Rock” and “Theater Camp.” It’s a totally original and bonkers idea, exactly what the Sundance Film Festival is all about, but when you try to dig deeper to find greater meaning, there’s not really much there.
It’s the first day of school, and Doug is ready to win back Abigail (Gillian Jacobs). Unfortunately for him, she is now dating smug, Stanley Cup-holding, Hoka-wearing Principal Michael Brady (Rob Lowe), and Doug has had it. Like a typical toxic man, he doesn’t take time to examine why things ended the way they did. It couldn’t possibly be his “I’m so much better than this” attitude as a rejected playwright who had to “settle” for being a middle school drama teacher. No, he’s on a path to destruction when he comes up with the perfect plan to ruin Brady’s life. With the principal focused on winning a Blue Ribbon Award for the school, Doug decides the best way to stop him is by upending the planned “West Side Story” production and creating an original musical so unhinged it has to be seen to be believed.
We’re never really clued into why his mind goes to a Sept. 11 stage production, but Brill does a good enough job of convincing us this makes absolute sense. Doug fully commits to his bitter side, taking no prisoners in his quest for revenge. Even his students aren’t spared, including a young Latina who originally loses out on the role of Maria to a white girl. “The thing about life is that sometimes you win, but sometimes you have to watch your enemy steal what could have been yours,” he tells her unsympathetically. His scenes with Lowe are also amusing, with both clearly biting their tongues to avoid saying how they really feel about each other. At the end of the day, though, Brady isn’t a bad guy, and Abigail doesn’t seem like a villain either, even if neither character gets much development beyond what Doug establishes for us. Doug is simply so wrapped up in being a hater that he can’t fathom the idea that Abigail might have grown tired of him and chosen someone a bit more normal.
As a comedy, “The Musical” doesn’t hit it out of the park every time, but it does offer a few standouts. The audition scene recalls the cutthroat standards of “Theater Camp,” even if this film doesn’t go quite as bitchy. One moment where Doug lectures his students about how “the machine” will always bring you down is paired with a screening of “The Manchurian Candidate,” almost as if Gustav Borg from “Sentimental Value” had picked out the syllabus. But what really takes the cake is seeing Doug’s original musical, “The Heroes,” come to life. Watching a young girl dressed as a desperate Rudy Giuliani, a plane hitting the Twin Towers, and soldiers invading the Middle East is out-of-this-world insane. The reactions from confused parents and a mortified Brady and Abigail are the icing on the cake. As viewers, we have to salute Bonilla and screenwriter Alexander Heller for even getting this movie green-lit, but that’s the magic of indie films. Kudos, too, to the young performers for bringing this madness to life.
Despite some occasional humor and welcome messiness, “The Musical” doesn’t give us much else to chew on. There isn’t much character development or any real sense of lessons learned, unless the overarching theme is to let angry, toxic men cook. If Bonilla had been more interested in exploring the darker side of her main character or in fully committing to a genre shake-up, there would have been far more for viewers to dissect and discuss. As it stands, though, “The Musical” remains a bold and surprising debut in many ways.
