Holiday Inn: The New Irving Berlin Musical - Live on Broadway Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Holiday Inn: The New Irving Berlin Musical - Live on Broadway Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 26, 2021

Note: This stage musical Blu-ray is available as part of Holiday Inn.

Pick a major screen musical from, say, around 1950 to around 1970, and chances are nine out of ten that the property began life on Broadway (or at least on a stage somewhere). Show Boat, Guys and Dolls, Kiss Me Kate , The Pajama Game, The King and I, West Side Story, The Music Man, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, Sweet Charity, Hello, Dolly! — the list goes on and on of stage musicals that frankly found varying degrees of success in their film adaptations, but which all shared a (more or less) common genesis. Now, musicals written expressly for the screen were certainly not a rarity, and there are any number of well remembered films that fit into that category, but these were often thought of as “imitations” of Broadway-esque shows, rightly or wrongly. It may be debatable whether it’s a dearth of creativity on the part of The Great White Way or Hollywood, but there’s been a decided and noticeable move over the past several years in particular to “reverse” this traditional order, and to offer stage versions of properties that began life as films, either as musicals (as in the case of Disney outings like The Lion King) or non-singing and dancing narratives (as in the case of Legally Blonde). Into that fray came Holiday Inn, which eked out a run of around three months on Broadway in 2016-17. Kinda sorta based on the film (not to state the obvious), but also departing from it rather radically in several ways, the stage musical is its own entity, one that relies on a grab bag of Irving Berlin tunes with inventive vocal arrangements and orchestrations, along with some spectacular dancing.

The basic outlines of the film's plot are more or less hewed to in this version, with Jim Hardy (Bryce Pinkham), Ted Hanover (Corbin Bleu) and Lila Dixon (Megan Sikora) starting things out "on stage" as performers. Jim proposes to Lila, suggesting they move to Connecticut to work a farm Jim has purchased, but Lila has eyes for Ted (and stardom), and demurs. Jim heads off to the hinterlands and soon enough has a gaggle of supporting characters surrounding him, as well as a major character who becomes his love interest, Linda Mason (Lora Lee Gayer). The farm is of course transformed into Holiday Inn, and a number of special day themed production numbers ensue. While the film was at least something of a "jukebox musical" in that it interpolated previously written Berlin tunes like "Easter Parade" into the proceedings, the stage musical takes that idea to extremes, but rather winningly so, for the most part. A whole retinue of Berlin classics as well as lesser known material is shoehorned into the plot, with a number of fantastically executed ensemble dance pieces adding to the fun. A special commendation should be afforded to the vocal and dance arrangements by Sam Davis and Bruce Pomahac, and the orchestrations by Larry Blank.

Note: There's one niggling qualm some vintage film fans may have with a tiny aspect of this adaptation. There's a joke about a movie version, which is actually shown, but it has the old style Universal logo, rather than the original film's Paramount peak. Such are the vagaries of rights changing hands as time marches on.

Holiday Inn: The New Irving Berlin Musical - Live on Broadway Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Holiday Inn: The New Irving Berlin Musical - Live on Broadway is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Universal Studios with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The relatively intimate confines of the Roundabout Theater actually help immensely in rather good coverage of this live stage performance. That in turn helps to support some nice fine detail levels on the often luxuriously layered costumes. The palette looks natural throughout. There are a few deficits in shadow detail in some dark moments, notably some scene changes where it arguably doesn't make a lot of difference. There are occasional moments that look a bit soft, and a lot of these seem to be taken from a vantage point down left (in theater parlance), so I'm wondering if a lens or camera might not have been completely up to snuff.

Note: I had a rather curious thing happen when I tried to play this in my PC drive, as I often do to check things like resolution and the like. I got the opening Universal masthead, but then just a black screen with no sound, albeit with a timecode still clicking by, as if the musical had started. I had no similar problem with the feature film in my PC drive (and indeed this disc played fine in my standalone player). I do use PowerDVD, which in my experience is one of the glitchiest playing softwares out there, but this one was a bit odd, so I thought I'd mention it here in case anyone else has it happen to them.

Holiday Inn: The New Irving Berlin Musical - Live on Broadway Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Those relatively intimate confines of the Roundabout Theater that worked for the video component might work against the audio side of things, if only slightly. While there's very appealing separation here, this is almost more like a stereo track than a surround track a lot of the time, though the side and rear channels do get engaged with regard to the orchestral backgrounds in particular. All of this said, dialogue and sung moments are rendered with fine fidelity and excellent clarity. Optional subtitles in English or French are available.

Holiday Inn: The New Irving Berlin Musical - Live on Broadway Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Not only are there no supplements on this disc, there's not even really a Main Menu. The disc boots to a trailer for Broadway HD's production of the charming Bock and Harnick musical She Loves Me (the link is to another TV version, not the one advertised in the trailer), which some fans may know was based on The Shop Around the Corner. After a couple of interstitials like the FBI warning, the musical starts up. After the final curtain, the disc has been authored to simply loop around and begin again. Pressing the Pop Up Menu allows you to Pause as well as choose Subtitles.

Holiday Inn: The New Irving Berlin Musical - Live on Broadway Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This is an amiable enough adaptation, one that will probably be best appreciated by those who pay attention to things like arrangements and choreography. Technical merits are generally solid. Recommended.