Stream It Or Skip It: ‘West Side Story’ on HBO Max and Disney+, Steven Spielberg’s Mostly Dazzling Update of a Classic Musical

The recent resuscitation of the Hollywood musical continues with Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, which debuts on HBO Max and Disney+ after a Christmastime theatrical release inspired overwhelming critical praise, seven Oscar nominations and paltry box office returns. Blame the latter on the pandemic, heavy competition from that Spider-Man movie or its inevitable debut on highly convenient streaming services, but it’s kind of a shame that not enough people saw the film on the big screen, since Spielberg, ever the maestro and tackling his first musical, isn’t stingy with the visual dazzle. (Maybe the point could be made that musicals, despite being more prevalent as of late, are still a tough sell; even In the Heights and Encanto struggled to stir significant interest in a trek to the cineplex.) Personally, as a studious appreciator of Spielberg, I bemoaned his desire to redo a tired, 60-year-old Stephen Sondheim musical in the twilight of his career, but was surprised to see him bring newfound life to a classic story.

WEST SIDE STORY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Chunks of New York City’s Upper West Side look like a war zone. “SLUM CLEARANCE” and “COMING SOON: LINCOLN CENTER FOR PERFORMING ARTS” signs flank the rubble. It’s 1957 and some wayward youths with their slick hair and (gasp) blue jeans run the streets like a pack of stray mutts. Four of them snap their fingers as they strut, all musical-like, and soon they become a dozen dancers. These guys are the Jets. They carry paint cans and they’re going to use the contents to cover a Puerto Rican flag emblazoned on a cement wall except the Sharks, their Puerto Rican roughneck equivalents, dash to the scene to stop them. All brawl: Pow, biff, whap, socko, until sirens blare and the cops arrive to break it up, saying stuff like can it and cut it out ya mooks. They also point to the wrecking-balled buildings and remind dese guys that the fighting is moot because they’re all about to be run over by, and I’m paraphrasing here, the Steamrollers of Gentrification.

Riff (Mike Faist), leader of the Jets, maintains his bruddahood of outcasts with classic circular logic, saying, “None of us would be here if it wasn’t for all of us,” implying that, individually, they’re all lowly worms who would probably be dead, but together, they’re alive, and a force. We don’t get an equivalent moment with the Sharks, possibly because the filmmakers are white. However, equal time is given to both sides when it comes to the star-crossed lovers at the heart of the plot. Tony (Ansel Elgort) is an ex-Jet and ex-con given a second chance with a stockboy job and a bed in the basement at a drugstore run by Valentina (Rita Moreno). Across the way is Maria (Rachel Zegler), sister of Shark head Bernardo (David Alvarez), who’s not married to but is very much together with Anita (Ariana DeBose), and all three live together.

For some reason, overly optimistic neighborhood dorks stage a dance in a high-school gymnasium, hoping the mingling of whites and Puerto Ricans will solve racism. How cute! It’s in this set piece where Spielberg’s camera becomes the movie’s most interesting character, and I don’t mean that as a slight, because the human characters here are deeper and more fleshy than ever before. Which isn’t to say that moony, pie-eyed love at first sight doesn’t occur between Tony and Maria, whose gazes lock from across a crowded room, and who steal a kiss behind the bleachers as they’re nearly slashed apart by LENS FLARE!, which serves to be only a symbolic threat, as the Jets and Sharks don’t take kindly to such inter-gang romance, and shove aside the countless and pervasive MOTES of LIGHT (so many MOTES, just HEAPS and HEAPS of MOTES of LIGHT) for another faceoff. It doesn’t happen right then and there though, in front of all the pretty girls in their pretty dresses, the guys having eschewed their (gasp) blue jeans for pressed slacks and trousers – but they make a plan to rumble later, tomorrow, midnight, a row that will live on in infamy, and nothing will stop it, not even almighty love itself.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I sense a generational battle brewing between the boomers and zoomers as to whether the new version will have the staying power of Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’ 1961 adaptation. Knee-jerk answer: Probably not, because musicals just don’t carry the cultural cache that they did 60 years ago; the Hamiltons of the world are just too rare.

Performance Worth Watching: DeBose, taking over the sparkplug role Moreno played in the 1961 film version, is Oscar-nominated for a reason; I’d argue her performance of “America” is the film’s strongest sequence, pairing heart and intellect within Janusz Kaminski’s spirited cinematography.

Memorable Dialogue: Tony tries to learn the right words in Spanish to recite to Maria: “‘Nunca’ means never? What’s ‘forever’?”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Spielberg and scripter Tony Kushner are quite effective in their modern thematic update of West Side Story: Structural racism and gentrification hover like ghouls over the story. The camera charts the path of the fateful gun, introduced in the third act, like an obsessed observer ready to chase a MacGuffin over a cliff. They render Anybodys, a stereotypical tomboy in previous iterations, a transgender character (played by Iris Menas) whose fringe presence shades scenes in a fresh, thoughtful light. The “Gee, Officer Krupke” musical sequence comes alive as a comical riff on the push-pull, nature-nurture struggle of mental illness – the Jets gang members aren’t rotten to the core, the world is corrupt and they had bad upbringings, so it’s not their fault they’re toothpick-gnawing, fisticuffing ruffians! And they bring back Moreno to play a brand-new character who’s a wise presence, a little weary in her old age, but a true believer in second chances, even amidst the bracing bleakness that this version ultimately lands on.

So there’s plenty to appreciate here, and maybe even love. Spielberg is a lifelong West Side Story fan and it shows, his camera capturing dynamic choreography as if it were wide-eyed with awe and wonder. He keenly balances gritty, urban realism with the artifice of the story’s stage roots, in the dazzling lighting, vibrant color and aesthetically savvy set design. Tonally, the film hums with the vibrancy of a production that’s about to sprout wings and take flight.

Spielberg’s direction truly makes a tired drama feel alive again. This, in spite of the staid love story at its core, a whirlwind two-day romance embodied by Elgort, whose charisma continually evades me, and Zegler, who’s glossy of presence despite playing a thinly written character whose passion is rendered flat by her Disney-princess singing voice. That we still feel modestly invested in their tug-o’-war between their pasts and futures is a credit to the bountiful electricity surrounding them. Should we shed a tear for them? Yeah, sure, why not.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The restless visual artistry of West Side Story finds Spielberg in top form, and he gives the melodrama the vigorous 21st-century thematic how’s-your-father it needs. It’s a small miracle that the filmmaker finds a way to dredge a bit of crossover appeal from some taxed, old-fashioned material.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.