Many Not Real Musicals

Not all these items are actual musicals. Take Ziegfeld follies for example. It certainly has music in it, and it's a story about music, but it's not a musical.

A musical must make use of music and singing to tell the story line.

Dictionary.com says "musical comedy, a play or motion picture in which the story line is interspersed with or developed by songs, dances, and the like."

Merriam-Webster.com defines a musical as "a movie or play that tells a story with both speaking and singing."

IMDb Glossary defines a musical as "A movie whose dramatic story structure includes unrealistic episodes of musical performance and/or dancing." Are romance and comedy unrealistic? I think not. So IMDb has it very wrong.

Defining a musical simply because it has music in it is certainly not workable, as almost every film has music in it. The key to making a film a musical is that the plot dialog must be interwoven with music. Without that specific quality, it's just another film that happens to have music in the film.