Newsies - Read All About It!

I sort of missed the whole Newsies on Broadway thing a few years ago.  Well, I suppose that's not totally accurate. I sort of deliberately missed the whole craze.  I had seen what Disney did to my Mary Poppins, and had been avoiding any and all Disney on Broadway attempts since then.  However, when the chance to see it in a movie theater, for a whole lot less than the price of a Broadway ticket, came up, I decided to take the leap.

This new craze of filming shows and showing them on the big screen might just be my new very favorite thing!  I still much prefer theater, however if it's a show I'm just a little interested in, it doesn't make sense to foot the bill for a theater ticket.  So seeing them from the comfort of a movie theater for about a quarter of the price is the next best thing.  And what makes this Newsies on Film thing even stranger is that Newsies closed a few years ago.  They re-assembled the cast and crew to film it and then release it on film.  Now that's dedication to arts!

So after all that, what did I think about it?  I thought it was amazing!  Disney may have finally won back my heart.  I've actually never even seen the original movie either, so I walked in completely unsure of what to expect.  But now after seeing the musical, I might need to see the real movie as well.  Jeremy Jordan and Kara Lindsay were fabulous as the leads.  I only knew Jeremy Jordan from playing a jerk on Smash, so it was nice to see him place a nice guy for a change.  It was also fun to see Andrew Keenan Bolger act since I've fallen in love with his writing.  But that's just the main characters.  The rest of the cast were immensely talented.

The choreography was very dance heavy, so I'm thinking most of the newsies had a dance background, which meant huge tapping and gymnastic numbers.  Those are always crowd pleasers and in this case, they were show-stoppers.  At one point the dancers are all dancing on individual newspapers.  It's hard to explain, but it was awesome!  And I haven't even mentioned the music yet.  I'm not sure how I've never heard these songs, but now that I have, they're stuck in my head, where I'm sure there'll be for a while.

All in all, Newsies is fun for the whole family and I highly recommend it.  After seeing the crowd that was there for this first showing, I'm pretty darn sure Fandango will be showing it again - loads of times!