BURLESQUE

Unfortunately, Burlesque isn’t campy enough to be so-bad-it’s-good, and not nearly impressive enough to be so-good-it’s-great.

Ali (Christina Aguilera) is a small-town Iowa waitress, who wraps a framed photo of her dead mother in a dainty handkerchief, packs her only-in-the-movies 1940s suitcase and hops a bus for the bright lights of Hollywood. It all feels very old-school movie musical, save for the irritatingly shaky hand-held camerawork and the fact that this story is set in present day... something that’s blindingly obvious the second Ali sets foot inside the Burlesque Lounge on the Sunset Strip.

Eyes wide and mouth agape, Ali watches den mother Tess (Cher) belt out one of the film’s standout numbers, “Welcome to Burlesque,” and instantly decides she wants to be on that stage alongside the glamorous, scantily clad young women bumping and grinding. As Ali struggles to prove she Has What It Takes, the audience is introduced to the cookie-cutter archetypes who will be key in her entirely predictable journey. They include:

* sensitive musician-turned-bartender Jack (Cam Gigandet), who’s too afraid to act on his feelings for Ali

* warm-hearted backstage guru Sean (Stanley Tucci), who nurtures and supports and serves as de-facto cheerleader

* scheming real-estate developer Marcus (Eric Dane), who sees what he wants and then takes it

and

* bitchy burlesque diva Nikki (Kristen Bell), who’s long been The Star of the revue but whose position is threatened by the plucky new arrival

Feeling like a much lower-rent version of Chicago or Cabaret, the film cobbles together clichéd dialogue with a fairly weak narrative arc – Ali wants to be a star, Tess needs a way to dig herself out of debt – and wraps everything in a series of musical numbers that all kind of seem like variations on the same thing. Even what should be a knockout solo ballad from Tess disappoints – not for the vocals or the lyrics, but because the scene is so flat and dead onscreen.

It doesn’t help that Aguilera, whose vocal talents are indisputable, is easily out-acted in every scene, and the audience I was with often started to snicker anytime her character was attempting to emote. I didn’t buy her as a naive ingenue, and I certainly didn’t believe her as a vixen for whom all the men swooned. (Honestly, with a different person in the lead role, I feel like this would have been a much better movie.)

Both Cher and Tucci are solid, which is to be expected, and Bell makes for a delicious but tragically underused villain. I kept waiting for her Nikki to do something seriously dastardly or wicked, but her “vengeance” amounts to little more than an unsuccessful prank and a handful of nasty remarks. Alas. And why is Alan Cumming, who's relegated to virtually silent-on-camera set dressing, even there?

Technically, the filmmaking is also sub-par. Most of the group numbers feel over-edited, so that you never really get a chance to see any one of the dancers for more than a second at a time. I’m still not sure what any of the non-billed women actually look like, because they were never shown in close-up long enough for me to see their faces properly. The aforementioned hand-held camerawork feels wildly out of place in a movie that practically screams out for a steadi-cam, and much of the film is shot through what seems like the same filter Barbara Walters uses for her TV specials – everything is slightly hazy and in soft-focus. I don’t know what the actual intended effect was meant to be, but the result was distracting, not dreamy.

Most frustrating was the fact that I actually really wanted to love this movie. It looked fun and exciting and energetic, and I hoped to leave the theater praising its virtues. Instead, I walked out feeling like I’d sat through a flashy, glittery clunker of a vanity project for its miscast star.