Three from Europe (sorta)

When your big Broadway musical leans towards ROCK, and it's about GERMAN, STRAIGHT, CHRISTIAN TEENAGERS, it's safe to say you've misunderstood your audience in every significant way. Or so I thought initially, but never fear, Duncan Sheik's "Spring Awakening" has enough songs about boys masturbating to keep it from crashing like that jukebox show about John Denver. Based on Frank Wedekind's 1891 drama about the goings-on at an affluent Christian school, the book matches purposefully (I hope) sophomoric lyrics and sub-"Rent" guitar riffs to a fin-de-siecle tale. The results are either amusing or embarrassing, depending on your particular mood. Songs dive from the oppressively emotional ("The Word of your Body") to gleeful cussing that is meant to jolt the musical form, (in big numbers like "The Bitch of Living" and "Totally Fucked"). If this supposed to capture adolescent see-sawing, kudos. For better or worse, this is the youngest-feeling musical Broadway has seen in a decade. (And that one about the Spelling Bee doesn't count.)


Martin Amis got majorly whipped over in the U.K. for his last novel, "Yellow Dog," which was bizarre and off-putting but not as jaw-droppingly bad as the Brits pretended it was. "House of Meetings", more conventional in tone, more "important" in subject matter, is reassuring. His story about gulag love, human degradation, and the current state of the wounded Russian giant echoes Solzhenytzin, (feel free to comment on that spelling, I'm too lazy to Google at this particular juncture), but Amis' distinctly British approach makes it all seem fresh.

Finally, and in case you haven't, (why haven't you?), go rent Borat, damn it. It's just as funny the second time around, and the DVD's plentiful deleted scenes will tickle you all a-new; although they reveal how bad the movie could have been. After all, (and this is where I throw my dissent), what makes the movie great was a fortuitous combination of character and social critique. The deleted scenes (Borat goofing off at a supermarket, getting turned on at a massage parlor) are funny but have nothing to reveal, hinting at an original scattershot approach that got whittled down to the satire we've come to love. This is why, much as I love this movie, I'm going to balk out of thinking Sasha Baron Cohen is some sort of universal comedy genius. Tried re-renting "Da Ali G Movie" recently? I didn't think so.

(Added Borat note: When I saw this at the theater, a group of frat guys on the front rows stood up during the trailer scene and cheered, having recognized fellow drunken idiocy. When the idiocy went too far, one of them stood up, turned to the rest of us and yelled: "We're not all like that!" If this movie shamed one jock out of jackassery, it's already done its duty.)