Review: Cyrano

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Cyrano de Bergerac (Peter Dinklage) has a way with words. (and fighting) He longs for his childhood friend, Roxanne (Haley Bennett) from afar. When she confesses to him that she loves a man named Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) though she has never spoken to him, Cyrano writes her letters under Christian's name confessing all the things he's too afraid to say to her. 

I'm at a strange place with this movie. I'm perplexed at how MGM completely bombed the marketing for this. It had a very limited release in December for critics to make it eligible for the Oscars, but then radio silence until its release this week. The only places I saw previews for Cyrano were on my Instagram stories. And strangely enough, it's like they wanted to hide the fact that this was a musical. Sure, there was singing in the theatrical trailer, which I did see occasionally, but most of the ads I got had no singing or dancing it at all. My husband went into this movie having no idea it was a musical (and I didn't tell him, because then he wouldn't have went with me) and he didn't like it at all.

Then there's the movie itself. Much like the marketing, it feels like no one quite knew what to do. While it has musical numbers, it never fully embraces them. Part of this, I believe is because Dinklage and Harrison Jr, though great actors are not strong singers. Haley Bennett is the only one that seems to excel at both. I just felt like they were too afraid to go all in. Acting wise, everything was great. I loved the casting. The costumes were absolutely gorgeous, and it makes sense that it's their lone Oscar nomination. 

I just feel like this movie was let down as a whole. Director Joe Wright, though I love the guy, wasn't the best choice for this. So is this for you? Well, this sure could use some theater love since it's currently bombing at the box office.

Grade: C+

Comments

  1. thevoid99March 1, 2022 at 8:48 AM

    It's a shame it's not doing well as I have heard varied reviews about the film but a lot of praise towards the performances. I might watch it mainly for Dinklage and Bennett.

    ReplyDelete
  2. SJHoneywellMarch 2, 2022 at 9:47 PM

    That's a shame. I'll probably track this down eventually because the idea of Peter Dinklage as Cyrano is brilliant, but I would have hoped for better.

    ReplyDelete
  3. SaraMarch 13, 2022 at 9:40 AM

    I enjoyed this a lot and I liked the music (The National!) but a part of me thinks it would have been better as a straight adaptation without the music. But I think Dinklage and Bennett were fantastic.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Brittani BurnhamMarch 14, 2022 at 7:53 AM

      I think so too. While some of the songs were catchy, they didn't really fit.

      Delete

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