West Side Story Review

5.0 Stars 

Steven Spielberg presents West Side Story.  This is only the second full length feature film to be made from the popular musical, the first was in 1961.  If you don't know the story, two children from warring gangs fall in love at first sight.  Of course, their romance is forbidden, but all Tony and Maria want is to be free, to end the fighting, and to be together.  Spoiler alert: it doesn't end well.

West Side Story was first written by legendary Broadway team of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim in 1957.  It was transformed into a movie in 1961 and has been performed in nearly every high school auditorium, college campus, or theatre venue that can take on a musical production.  It is a modern retelling of Shakespeare's 1597 Romeo and Juliet except it is set in New York instead of Verona, it's the Jets and the Sharks instead of the Capulets and Montagues, and it's song and dance instead of thees and thous.  

So, we all get the gist of the story, many of us have seen West Side Story in some capacity.  Some of us may have even performed in a production.  So what makes this one special?  Well, it's Steven Spielberg. Spielberg's West Side has been nominated for 7 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director.  It's been 60 years since someone attempted to make a West Side Story film.  But, it's not like a typical "remake" like The Day the Earth Stood Still or Planet of the Apes or Psycho or even Spider-Man or Superman.  In those remakes, fans are expecting to see a new, different, modern, hopefully better version of the original.  There's only so much you can change with West Side Story, or any Broadway musical.  Fans are actually expecting the songs and dialogue to be the same ones they've always known.  But there's only so much you can do with this, right?  Again, it's Steven Spielberg.

Spielberg clearly has took advantage of his abilities as a film maker and the modern technologies available to him in West Side Story that were previously impossible.  No, there's no dinosaurs or aliens.  But there are sweeping epic camera shots that just weren't possible in 1961.  Back then, it looked very much like it was filmed on a very large theatre stage.  

Spielberg made the decision to keep the look and the feel (costumes, buildings, hairstyles, cars) of the 1960's.  For the most part, the music, lyrics and story were the same.  But this was such a brilliant movie with every decision that was made.  The choreography from Justin Peck (New York City Ballet's resident choreographer) gave a breath of fresh life while paying homage to the original dances from 1961.  The costumes and set were perfect from the 1960's.  And Spielberg even reached out to his long time musical muse John Williams to perk up the music.  Williams instead suggested using Oscar Nominated composer David Newman and world-renowned conductor Gustavo Dudamel to give Bernstein's music a fresh recording.

So the only thing left is the actors.  Basically you had Ansel Elgort as Tony (from Baby Driver and The Goldfinch) and legend Rita Moreno as Valentina and Ariana DeBose as Anita.  She was in Hamilton . . . though, she was part of the ensemble.  That's it.  The entire rest of the cast is a long list of nearly completely unknowns.  We have Rachel Zegler in the lead role of Maria.  This is Rachel's first feature film credit.  In fact, this is the first on screen performance of any kind for Rachel.  However, she is slated to play the lead in the upcoming live-action Disney remake of Snow White.  Another somewhat newcomer David Alvarez plays Bernardo.  

But this is one of Spielberg's strong suits.  He takes relative unknowns and gets the performances of a lifetime that creates an instant classic. And he did just that.  Everything about this 2021 version of West Side Story was perfect.  Every acting and singing performance was delicious, bright, intentional, sincere, beautiful.  Elgort and Zegler even sang a couple of their numbers live on set.  Officer Krupke, Riff, Chino, Anybodys.  They were all perfect.  There wasn't a performance that you had to overlook or forgive or justify.  They were amazing.  My gut instinct after watching this was to give it a rare perfect rating.  I gave West Side Story a very optimistic 4.5 Star Prediction.  I have spent the last day trying to think of any reason why this should be knocked down from a perfect rating.  Honestly, I can't think of any.  This was genius and worthy of 5.0 Stars.  If you haven't seen it already, do so.  I know I'm going to be watching this one again.  So, what movie will be on my mind next?  We shall see . . . .