West Side Story Review!

Alright! Today I’m reviewing Steven Spielberg’s latest and a remake of the classic 1961 musical - West Side Story, which in itself is an adaptation of the original Broadway musical, which in itself is actually just Romeo and Juliet but with more knives. 

It’s a gripping story about the rival gangs the Jets and the Sharks, whose makeup as white and Puerto Rican, respectively, plays into their power struggle for San Juan Hill in west Manhattan, and the epic love story between the pride and jewel of the Jets, Tony, and how he falls in love with Maria, whose brother leads the Sharks. 

In terms of production, West Side Story is an absolute banger. Everything feels so real and… dirty? This is probably the dirtiest movie I’ve ever seen. The harsh natural daylight that reflects against gravelly reconstruction in a gray city where dirtied young men do complicated dance numbers all make it feel gritty. 

And that’s not gritty in the violent, realistic way (Although that does, interestingly, apply here), but gritty in the way that you can see the grit that went into making the sets. The movie’s also surprisingly violent, which isn’t to say it’s an Avengers movie, but rather that it didn’t pull any off-screen punches. All the violence in the movie feels real, purposeful, and it’s never glorified. 

The framing of the movie is spectacular as well. I feel like I just barely got done talking about how great the cinematography in The Batman was, but it should be noted framing and cinematography are different as squares and rectangles are. Cinematography is camera movements and the set/locations while framing is how everything is, well, framed in a camera frame. West Side Story was a movie where you just notice how natural yet beautifully everything was framed. It makes emotional scenes smaller, it draws attention, and it makes the dance numbers feel big. 

Just look at that framing. 

This is a Spielberg at his peak. The man has been making cinema-shaping movies since the 70s, he’s only growing more powerful and knowledgeable with age. This is a master of his craft given some of the best source material from the genre based on some of the best source material from another genre. The movie looks, feels, and is directed with such a sturdy hand one cannot help but admire the intensity it brings. 

The dance choreography, even when faced with the unavoidable problem of “Since when are large-scale elaborate dance numbers common in the streets of New York?” For such cool and hardened gangsters, the well-choreographed dances are either done with such speed and intensity that it astounds or it breaks the suspension of disbelief.

This is where the single biggest fault with the movie comes in - the fact that it is a musical. Musicals are, in general, a genre I enjoy poking fun at, expressing my disapproval with, and then end up watching a ton (Just last year I reviewed In the Heights, tick… tick… BOOM!, Dear Evan Hansen, and Little Shop of Horrors). But each one has the exact same problems: 

• They’re too long
• There’s a giant dance number that adds absolutely nothing
• The male and female leads have little reason to fall in love with each other aside from being the leads
• They’re too long
• A song or two can always be cut for not adding anything
• They’re too long

West Side Story is an enormous two hours and thirty-six minutes, which is far too long. While for the most part it’s fairly invigorating and a lot of fun, there are always those couple songs you wish you could skip because they’re not catchy, don’t add anything, and go on for too long. Luckily for this iteration, those numbers are balanced out by true show-stoppers such as Maria, Cool, Gee, Officer Krupke, and Tonight Quintet each hit nice blends of artistic, funny, and beautifully performed. The rest? Well. They’re not particularly great. Don’t get me wrong, they’re always entertaining, but they never really have the same punch that those examples have. 

Is this a kissing movie?

The story’s adherence to the classic Romeo and Juliet formula was also a bit grating. I didn’t think that in 2022 I would see another one of these “We met briefly last night, I would die for you” plots play out, but here we are. When the characters sing about their great love for each other and unending yearning for the nectar of their skin, it comes off as overdramatic since 1) They’re teenagers and 2) They literally met last night. 

But those are just classic storytelling problems. At least “Juliet” isn’t 13 this time. And the rest of the movie is still largely enjoyable and, unlike a lot of musicals, has a story to tell, heart to do it with, and enough grit to make it cool, boy. 

Overall, I give West Side Story a 7/10. “Spielberg has now hit the triple trifecta of impossibility - a movie better than the book, a remake better than the original, and a tolerable musical.”

This is the type of movie that appeases your musical loving grandmother and the entertained-by-violence youth.