I loved Blackpool

Yet when I saw this I kept thinking something's wrong. I popped in my DVD of Blackpool and watched ALL of the musical scenes. It was then that it hit me what the problem was with Viva Laughlin. When character's sing they look horribly uncomfortable. The main guy looks stiff when he sings "Viva Las Vegas" and Hugh jackman is trying too hard.

But in Blackpool, the characters make bursting into song seem like a natural thing. The musical segments in Viva Laughlin are horribly gimmicky. It's like someone wrote a confrontation between Ripley and his lover and suddenly thought "Hell, this is a musical! Throw a damn song in there." The result is the completly random scene where they sing: "One way/Or another/I'm gonna find 'ya".

Blackpool wisely only uses the musical scenes when they serve to drive the plot forward. This is shown at the end of the first episode of Blackpool where Ripley and the detective are having a confrontation. Rather than write pages of dialouge establishling how they hate each other they simply sum it all up when the detective sings "You keep lying when you ought be truthin'" To which Ripley sings "And you keep playing when you oughta not bet!" They continue in their tense little musical stand-off eventually taking turns to tell one another "One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you!"

Anyone who liked or hated Viva Laughlin should track down ANY muscial song from Blackpool on Youtube and see what I mean.

Waiting for:
Southland Tales
Fur
Grindhouse