Burlesque (2010)

The last trip to the cinema this year was to see Burlesque, a movie I've been looking forward to for a long time. I've seen the trailer several times, the poster was up in Copenhagen, and the prospect of seeing Cher act and sing again was almost too much! So what if the reviews have been average at best, this was a musical starring Christina Aguilera and The Cher!

Similar to Coyote Ugly, this movie had a standard girl goes to big city and shows off her new talent, rises to the top of her profession. While Ugly had pole dancing, Burlesque has well, something that's not really Burlesque, but involves lip-synching to old numbers and dancing in underwear. That is until Christina's Ali rocks up to Cher's (well ok she plays a character called Tess, but really she's Cher) club and starts wailing like a good 'un. Then the club institutes a new regime of singing and dancing in underwear. See the difference?

Another thing the two movies share/Cher (haha) is a hot male lead. Where Ugly had beautiful, dark, small-but-perfectly-formed Adam Garcia, Burlesque has gorgeous, ripped, tall hunk Cam Gigandet, who we see a lot of at one point. What an ass. Hot. Anyway, while Aguilera's alright at acting, she's more about the warbling and dancing, while Cher is of course an all rounder, Gigandet imbues the movie with heart and acting chops, which surprised me I have to say. I was expecting him to be as wooden as Aguilera... but that's not fair, she does ok - in fact she's pretty unrecognisable until she opens her mouth. 

The songs, all 10 of them (original ones), were all good toe tapping numbers with Show Me How You Burlesque a highlight, my only grumble is that there weren't enough of them spread over the movie's almost 2 hour running time. And Cher only gets two!! Welcome to Burlesque is fantastic, but it's the slower You Haven't Seen The Last Of Me that is quite rightly getting all the plaudits. It's classic Cher, yet it's melancholy and sad and amazing.

Burlesque isn't up there with Moulin Rouge and Chicago in the pantheon of top musicals, but thanks to Cher, Stanley Tucci's way with a camp line or two, and Aguilera's gusto in the music numbers, oh and Gigandet and his perfect abs, this is a movie I'll be happy to revisit and sing along to the soundtrack with again and again.