Newsies aka The News Boys (1992)

Newsies aka The News Boys (Dir: Kenny Ortega, 1992).

Kenny Ortega's directorial debut was this fact-based musical based upon the New York newsboy's strike of 1899, with tunes courtesy of Oscar winner Alan Menkin and co-composer Jack Feldman.  

A youthful Christian Bale stars as New York newspaper hawker Jack Kelly. When New York World owner Joseph Pulitzer (Robert Duvall) raises the price of the paper and cuts into the boys earnings, Jack leads the newsies in the historic strike which eventually lead to child labour reforms. Aiding him in his quest are journalist Bryan Denton (Bill Pullman) and showgirl Medda Larkson (Ann Margret).

On original release Newsies was an unmitigated critical and commercial disaster. Such was its failure that the movie was hastily re-titled The News Boys for international markets. But all attempts to prevent a flop proved futile; the movie recouped less than $3 million of its $15 million budget and was, seemingly, destined for obscurity. Yet this musical's journey from chump to champ was just beginning. Slowly gaining an appreciative following from home video release and TV screenings, jump forward 20 years and the movie had enough of a following to warrant a stage adaptation. The former turkey was a huge success, winning 2 Tony Awards from 8 nominations; a long way to come for a movie with 5 Golden Raspberry nominations. Things came full circle when the theatrical production was filmed and released as Newsies: The Broadway Musical (Brett Sullivan, 2017).

But what of the movie itself? Newsies is far from perfect. It has an uncertain tone: on one level it doesn’t shy away from the more unsavoury aspects of the story; we see the boys fighting, smoking and spitting (something I find especially distasteful), cavorting with burlesque girls and suffering at the hands of police brutality. Yet at the same time it all seems a bit of a lark, with far better living conditions than I imagine many newsies experienced. Perhaps a movie about child exploitation dressed up a family friendly musical would always struggle with making its subject matter palatable, but Newsies manages to stay on the right side of good taste! 

Performances are strong, especially from Bale who proves a surprisingly adept song and dance man. The choreography is as polished as you would want and the songs are tuneful. It is also refreshing to see a musical which doesn’t suffer from the dreaded auto-tune that afflicts some modern productions. Kenny Ortega had made his reputation as a choreographer and does well in his directorial debut, setting the stage for his later career helming energetic tween franchises such as High School Musical (K Ortega, 2006) and Descendants (K Ortega, 2015).

In retrospect it is not difficult to see why Newsies the movie fared so badly back in 1992. Big Broadway style musicals were just not that popular. An old fashioned movie musical, which consciously recalled movie musicals of the past, particularly Oliver! (Carol Reed, 1968), would have seemed positively archaic alongside popcorn blockbusters such as Batman Returns (Tim Burton, 1992) and Lethal Weapon 3 (Richard Donner, 1992). However, 30 years later in an era when the public has rediscovered its appetite for big budget musicals, this old style Hollywood movie, with its big production numbers and lovingly recreated soundstage sets, is a quaintly quirky treat! It would be fair to say that Newsies is a bit of an acquired taste but it should appeal to those with an appreciation for old fashioned musicals, fans of Disney Channel movies and anyone in between!