West Side Story (2021)

I waited a couple of weeks after watching the movie to see if the passage of time lessened my feelings of dissatisfaction with this remake. Yes, it has a cast that is more diverse than the original and more in keeping with what the Sharks and the Jets would have looked like. No, the 150 minutes did not fly by, there could have been some serious cropping of the story if they were going to the trouble of a remake. If Joel Coen can get the Tragedy of Macbeth down to 90 minutes, then why the heck can't this reworking of the Romeo and Juliet story get winnowed down to a similar length. The dancing is at times breath taking, but everything else was all too familiar. I am sure that there is a lot of great new dialogue added because Tony Kushner is a talented writer (not known for brevity, of course, but he has a way with words), but it was lost on me. If you deeply love musicals, this is a classic score that will take you back, and Ariana DeBose is mesmerizing, but so far this is my least favorite nominee that I have seen--I am sitting at 38 of the 54 movies nominated watched, so I could still find a clunker in the remainders, but it will definitely fall into the bottom third.