Spielberg ‘West Side Story’ Remake: Adequate Update

When people say they love Pirouetting Gangsters of 1957, a.k.a West Side Story, what they’re really saying is that they love a portion of it: the songs. The slate of offerings from Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim is Hall of Fame stuff — in the all-time top ten.

Two-thirds of the show, however, is the book, a.k.a the bits between the songs, and those parts are uniformly terrible — corny, campy, forced, melodramatic sludge. The show was the creation of four well-heeled gay Jews (Arthur Laurents and Jerome Robbins were the others) who hadn’t the slightest insight about, or interest in, the gang life that was in the tabloids at the time, and so they concocted a silly Romeo & Juliet knockoff in which dangerous men would express their rage toward one another by busting out sudden, inexplicable ballet moves. The 1961 movie version is a cringe fest. Few classic movies are so unbearable.

About the Author

Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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When people say they love Pirouetting Gangsters of 1957, a.k.a West Side Story, what they’re really saying is that they love a portion of it: the songs. The slate of offerings from Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim is Hall of Fame stuff — in the all-time top ten.

Two-thirds of the show, however, is the book, a.k.a the bits between the songs, and those parts are uniformly terrible — corny, campy, forced, melodramatic sludge. The show was the creation of four well-heeled gay Jews (Arthur Laurents and Jerome Robbins were the others) who hadn’t the slightest insight about, or interest in, the gang life that was in the tabloids at the time, and so they concocted a silly Romeo & Juliet knockoff in which dangerous men would express their rage toward one another by busting out sudden, inexplicable ballet moves. The 1961 movie version is a cringe fest. Few classic movies are so unbearable.